Democratic and Revolutionary Traditions in Latin America

Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
Democratic and Revolutionary Traditions in Latin America

Author(s): Alan Knight
Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 147-186
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Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 147-186, 2001
Democratic and Revolutionary
Traditions in Latin America*

ALAN KNIGHT
St Antony's College, Oxford OX2 6JF
This article seeks to identify and explain the historical links between
democracy and revolution in Latin America. It first defines and

analyses 'democratic' and 'revolutionary' traditions in the continent. It
notes the precocity of nineteenth-century Latin American liberalism

which, stimulated by the independence struggles, carried implications
for the subsequent onset of democracy in the twentieth century. It then
presents a typology of five twentieth-century political permutations

(social democracy, revolutionary populism, statist populism, socialist
revolution, and authoritarian reaction), seeking to tease out the

corresponding relationships between the two 'traditions'. It concludes
(inter alia) that the current triumph of liberal democracy in Latin
America, while in part attributable to historical precedent, is also

significantly contingent, and dependent on the apparent exhaustion of
the revolutionary tradition.
Keywords: Authoritarianism, Democracy, Liberalism, Populism,

Revolution, Rights, Tradition.
This article tries to unravel two crucial threads in Latin America's political
history - democracy and revolution, their respective 'traditions' and mutual
relationships. It begins with some some conceptual clarification. For, while
starting articles with a pernickety 'naming of parts' is not necessarily good
rhetorical practice, in this case, when we are handling several slippery parts revolution, democracy, tradition - it is probably as well to make the attempt, in
order to avoid dropping things and generating confusion. Foilowing a brief

clarification, therefore, I offer a broad and schematic analysis of democratic and
revolutionary traditions in Latin America which invites comparison with other
cases.
* This paper was written in response to an invitation to participate in a cross-national
panel on 'Democratic Traditions and Revolutionary Traditions' at the American

Historical Association 114th Annual Meeting, Chicago, January 2000. It has been
rewritten in light of helpful readers' comments.
? 2001 Society for Latin American Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 147
Alan Knight
1. Democracy, revolution, tradition

Of the three constituent concepts, 'democracy' is the most fully theorized and, I
would say, theorizable. That is to say, it is a useful - as well as an actual concept; whereas revolution and, a fortiori, tradition, are less well worked and, I
would suggest, less useful; 'tradition', in fact, is often more trouble than it's
worth. The rough consensus among political scientists today is to take liberal
representative democracy, often defined in Dahlian ('polyarchic') terms, as the
norm: this definition would embrace the twin principles of (i) free association and
expression (civic rights) and (ii) electoral participation (political rights).1 Of

course, this definition is not meant to be normative (we are not saying this is best
system), or exclusive (that it is the only form of democracy, either conceptually or
practically). Indeed, a principal concern of this article is to consider how

alternative forms of 'democracy' ('illiberal', 'non-bourgeois', 'participatory')
have been conceived, not least by regimes of 'revolutionary' provenance and
'tradition'. Thus, critics of bourgeois democracy have touted the claims whether in theory or practice - of popular, participatory, organic, direct, social,
and workers' democracy. They have justified these claims, it seems to me, in
terms of two supposed advantages: first, superior representation (representation
that is more direct, transparent, and inherently democratic); and, second,

superior provision of welfare, of socio-economic benefits (thus,'social rights', the
third of MarshalPs famous triad, are grafted on to civic and political rights)
(Marshall, 1977). Beneficiaries will thereby enjoy the political rights of Athenian
citizens coupled with the welfare provision of, say, the Swedish welfare state in
its heyday. In turn, critics of these critics have in turn called - in Enrique Krauze's
words - for a 'democacy without adjectives', that is, a plain, unadorned,

procedural, Dahlian democracy (Krauze, 1986).
The previous paragraph contained the crucial qualifier 'in theory or practice'.
Throughout the discussion it is clearly necessary to distinguish between, on the
one hand, rhetorical claims made for either greater political representation or
fairer socioeconomic arrangements, and, on the other hand, practical outcomes,
which may be quite different. It may also be interesting (if difficult) to try to
assess whether, when theory and practice diverge, such divergence is the result of:
(a) initial - or 'structuraP? - hypocrisy: the theory was never seriously

entertained in the first place; the Bolsheviks never contemplated a workers'
democracy; it was merely a rhetorical ploy; or
(b) creeping - or 'contingent'? - hypocrisy, alias 'the revolution betrayed'; an
instance of the old Actonian principle,2 whereby, for example, the

Bolsheviks, Stalin in particular, though initially sincere, succumbed to the
lure of power and the pressures of paranoia; or
1 See Dahl (1971) and, for glosses and operationalizations of the definition, Held (1996,
pp. 201-8); Huntington (1991, pp. 6-9); Lopez-Alves (2000, p. 4).
2 'All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
148 ? 2001 Society for Latin American Studies

(c) ineluctable circumstances; the iogic of the revolution'; what might be called
the MacMillan principle;4 that is, the revolution blown off course by hostile
storms, whether of domestic or external origin (e.g., the Kornilov rebellion,
the Allied intervention in Russia); all of which oblige initially sincere

revolutionaries to renege on their early promises.
Needless to say, these three interpretations - to which I shall briefly return in
conclusion - are not mutually exclusive; most revolutionary situations embody
aspects of all three.
But there is an important and easily overlooked rider to this (familiar)

argument. Revolutionary regimes are not the only ones to dispiay a yawning gap
between theory and practice, between the 'public' and 'hidden' transcripts (Scott,
1990). Nor are they the only ones to try to bridge the gap by specious reasoning
and hollow rhetoric. Liberal-bourgeois regimes are also pretty good at claiming a
false fidelity to their self-proclaimed (democratic) principles. Slavery coexisted
for decades with the Bill of Rights; women were denied the vote - even in
'consolidated' democracies - for even longer (Collier, 1999, pp. 26-7; Markoff,
1996, pp. 55-6). Today, as (Dahlian) democracy has again become the norm in
Latin America (only Cuba and, some would say, Venezuela now buck the trend),
it is a democracy of many colours, which, apart from its inherent fragility,

embodies significant failings: less than transparent elections;6 manipulated
media; endemic corruption (Little and Posada-Carbo, 1996, chaps. 3, 9-12); and
recurrent political violence (Koonings and Kruijt, 1999).8 Indeed, it may be true
Knight (1986,1, p. 302) which stresses the importance of 'factors' (exigencies, motives,
loyalties) which cannot be explained purely or even primarily in terms of prior

(structural?) 'factors' (e.g., class, ideology, geography, ethnicity), but which have to be
seen in terms of the contingent logic of the Revolution. Indeed, it might be roughly
generalized that as revolutions proceed, so the prior structural factors lose importance
relative to the contingent.
What did politicians most fear, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was asked?
To which he replied: 'events, my dear boy, events'.
It is worth stressing that the question of fragility, however crucial in practical terms,
has to be analytically separated from the question of democratic status: you can have
genuine - but fragile - democracies, just as you can have strong and durable pseudo-
democracies: see Huntington (1991, pp. 10-11).

Mexico, whose 'transition' to democracy has been the most halting and ambiguous of
all the major Latin American countries, has nevertheless advanced significantly in
terms of clean, competitive elections, hence of greater political pluralism, which the
presidential election of July 2000 seemed to confirm. State elections (e.g., Tabasco in
October 2000) are another matter. As of 1998, 61% of Mexicans expected elections to
be 'dirty' (as against 33% who expected them to be clean); Costa Ricans and Chileans
had quite different perceptions: Costa Ricans: 28% (dirty) and 63% (clean), Chileans
23% and 68%: see Hewlett/MORI (1998, p. 34).
As elections are cleaned up, so critical focus has switched to the broader context of
political campaigning and electioneering, notably party funding and media coverage:
for example Orme (1997); Skidmore (1993).
Indeed, there is some suggestive evidence from Mexico that, as political competition
and pluralism increase, so political violence (e.g., attacks on party activists and
journalists) also increases; thus, civil and political rights do not march ahead in
) 2001 Society for Latin American Studies 149
Alan Knight
that South America's most democratic country (Colombia) is also its most
violent. Hence, students of Latin American politics have resorted to their own
academic qualifiers (counterparts of the politicians' 'workers', 'social', and

'organic' democracy): 'hybrid regimes', 'delegative democracy', 'low-intensity
democracy' - all of which seek to convey the outstanding 'democratic deficit'
which Latin America suffers (Von Mettenheim and Malloy, 1998, pp. 4-6, 176).
Thus, the gap between theory and practice, public and hidden transcript, is not
confined to 'progressive', 'socialist' or 'workers' states. (We could debate the
relative size of the gap in different contexts; but this could easily become an
exercise in cheap Cold War point-scoring).
If 'democracy' is complicated but relatively clear, the same cannot be said of
'revolution' and 'tradition'. As regards 'tradition, we need not (fortunately) get
ensnared in the trammels of 'tradition and modernity', those two conceptual
impostors who have for too long conned the public and who, it seems, have
recently enjoyed something of a comeback. For in this context, 'tradition' does
not denote a bundle of all-embracing and supposedly structurally-related
attributes (Parsonian 'pattern variables', if you like) locked in timeless
dichotomous tensions with their 'modern' counterparts (Parsons, Shils, and
Olds, 1962, p. 76ff.). Rather, I take our our ('revolutionary' and 'democratic')
traditions to be living, contingent, idiosyncratic, historical organisms, evolving
over time, and shaped by particular spatial and temporal environments. (Given
the Darwinian metaphor, we might even wish to call them 'memes') (Blackmore,
1999). Thus, in Latin America, we might talk of the Mexican and Cuban
revolutionary traditions; or the Uruguayan and Costa Rican democratic
traditions; and each would comprise a sui generis (though possibly connected) l
lockstep: Foweraker and Landman (1997, pp. 95-7). A more serious and pervasive
factor - in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru in particular - is 'narco-violence'. Of course,
the impact of drugs is an independent variable which cannot be blamed on demo?
cracy; we are dealing with an unfortunate temporal coincidence (democratization +
drug boom). However, it could be argued that the political systems of these countries
have proved deficient in mitigating the violence; in some cases, there is clear evidence
of collusion between ('democratic') politicians and narco interests.
9 Most violent in terms of both outright guerrilla activity and quotidian violence
(murders and kidnappings). Critics will point to Colombia's longstanding democratic
deficit; but the country has experienced over fifty years of civilian rule, regular
competitive elections, and party alternation in power.
10 I choose these cases because they are familiar stereotypes. The case of Uruguayan
democracy is interesting, since it figured as the classic - consolidated? - democracy (the
'Switzerland of Latin America') in older texts: e.g., Dix (1973, pp. 294-5). Within a few
years it had succumbed to what was, in terms of political prisoners per capita, the
harshest authoritarian regime in Latin America: Rouquie (1987, pp. 224-5, 248-57).
11 Connected particularly by virtue of the demonstration effect which seems to breed
political emulation throughout Latin America (perhaps the world): an authoritarian
wave in the 1960s and early 1970s; a democratic wave since the 1980s: Huntington,
(1991, pp 31-3, 45); Markoff (1996, pp. 81, 86). For analysis of the recent emulatory
trend, see Whitehead (1996).

set of principles, experiences, myths, texts, 'transcripts', songs, symbols, heroes,
memories, assumptions, and narratives. In accordance with the trend toward

provincial and local history, we might wish to disaggregate further and refer, for
example, to the revolutionary traditions of Cuba's Sierra Maestra, or of Mexico's

insurgent zones: Chihuahua, Morelos, Juchitan, or the Laguna region (Thomas,
1971, pp. 246-7, 319, 904ff.; Knight, 1986, I, pp. 105-6, 118-27, 280-1, 373-4).
While 'tradition' may be usefully and briefly defined in these terms, the
qualifier 'revolutionary' complicates the matter considerably. Compared to
'democracy', 'revolution' is poorly theorized; partly because less attention has
been lavished upon it (especially in the last twenty years);12 but moreso, I think,
because it is inherently resistant to theorization. Revolutions are, as Eric Wolf
once put it, 'just-so stories', individual, unique, and contingent (Wolf, 1971, p.
12). Just-so stories can, of course, constitute a meaningful category: we can refer
generally to 'revolutions' or more specifically to 'great', 'social', 'peasant',

'bourgeois', or 'socialist' revolutions, and thereby denote a recognisable category,
analogous, say, to 'wars', 'civil wars', or 'total wars'. My own working definition
of a 'great revolution' would involve both process (a substantial, violent, and

voluntaristic struggle for political power) and outcome (a major reordering of
social and political relations) (Knight, 1990, pp. 179-80). But a recognisable - and
therefore useful - description does not add up to a theory (which I take to imply
some sort of causal logic;13 or, if you have a nostalgic taste for old jargon, certain
'laws of motion'). I have yet to encounter any explanatory logic or 'laws of

motion' which illuminate revolutions (the kind of laws or logic which are usually
presented are either plain wrong, utterly trivial, or purely tautological).14

Revolutions, as Alasdair Maclntire once suggested, are like holes in the ground:
we know one when we see one, but a 'theory of holes in the ground' would be a
scholastic chimaera (Maclntire,1971, p. 260).

'Democracy' is, I think, somewhat different. It is not only a recognisable
category; it also more amenable to comparative analysis and theorization. One
good reason - if we compare 'democracies' with 'great revolutions' - is that
democracies have been much more common, hence the sample is bigger. (Latin
America experienced only three, or perhaps four, 'successful' 'great' revolutions
12 Although the books keep coming (recent examples would include Kimmel [1990] Rice
[1991] and Foran [1997]), it seems to me that both the volume and the originality of
'theoretical revolutionary studies' have declined since the 1960s and early 1970s,
especially relative to other themes (such as democratization, state-building, nationformation, and political economy); a trend which is hardly surprising in view of
events in the 'real world'.
13 That 'logic' may involve supposed causes (e.g.,'relative deprivation', the 'J-curve') or
stages in the process - or 'natural history' - of revolution (e.g., moderate?radicalThermidor): Kimmel (1990, pp. 47-52, 75-82).
14 For a recent list, see Wickham-Crowley (1997, pp. 46-64). It is worth noting that,
despite a generation of revolutionary theorizing, the fall of the Soviet Union and its
empire was not foreseen (though, of course, it retrospectively confirmed some pet
theories): Runciman (1998, p. 16).
Alan Knight
during the twentieth century). More important, however, 'democracy' denotes
a form of political organization which can be abstracted from the messy 'real
world'; its incidence and viability can then be tested; it can be correlated with,
say, country size, per capita income, or literacy (Dix, 1973, pp. 270, 274-5;
Huntington, 1991, pp. 59-72; Seligson, 1987, pp. 6-10); its longevity can be
measured; and, perhaps most convincingly of all, variant forms of democracy can
be assessed (two-party against multi-party; proportional representation against
'first past the post'; presidential againt parliamentary) (Linz and Valenzuela,
1994). Such inquiries, even if they are not always conclusive, can at least proceed
on the basis of reasonably clear premises, accessible (including quantitative) data,
and broad samples. None of these conditions apply in the case of 'great
revolutions'; and while dropping the qualifier 'great' - thus expanding the field to
include all forms of revolution, coup, insurrection and even civil violence1 - may
boost the sample, it also stretches the category to breaking point. Finally,
'revolution' has an inherently narrative, hence contingent, quality, which
'democracy' does not. A democracy - especially a 'consolidated' democracy can be analysed in terms of durable structural characteristics (parties, elections,
voting patterns, perhaps 'political culture'). A revolution - by definition a

transient phenomenon - embodies sharp twists and turns, accidents, and a
multiplicity of incommensurate factors (political, social, economic, military). It
lends itself to - even requires - narrative treatment. We can learn from a static
analysis - a snapshot - of, say, European or North American democracy; but a
15 Mexico, 1910; Bolivia, 1952; Cuba, 1959; Nicaragua, 1979. These were successful in
that they toppled old regimes and transformed social and political systems. In Cuba
the revolutionary regime still rules; in Mexico it ruled, in highly mutated form, down
to 2000. In Bolivia it fell after only twelve years; but its revolutionary efforts could not
be undone (compare Guatemala, 1954, which experienced a pretty thorough counter-
revolution). The Nicaraguan revolution (1979) perhaps bears comparison to the
Bolivian.
16 For example, Eckstein (1964); Tilly (1991). Crahan and Smith (1992, pp. 79-108) seem
somewhat ambivalent: they define 'revolution' broadly as 'an illegal seizure of

political power, by the use or threat of force, for the purpose of bringing about a
structural change in the distribution of political, social, or economic power' (p. 79): a
definition which would seem to include a range of politically ambitious military coups
(Guatemala, 1954; Peru, 1968; Chile, 1973; Argentina, 1976). Yet they concur with my
estimate that there have been 'only four genuine revolutions' in Latin America
(Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua); and coups, such as Pinochet's, are not
'revolutionary in any strict sense of the term' (p.83). This seems to imply a 'stricter'
definition than that originally given by the authors themselves.
17 Trotsky gave us the notion of 'permanent revolution'; however, this, insofar as I

understand it, involves (a) an elision of bourgeois, proletarian and peasant revolutions
in one country (e.g., Russia) and (b) a process of world revolution (which in turn
would bolster and justify [a]). 'Permanent revolution' does not therefore mean a
protracted or prolonged revolution; on the contrary the idea of elision implies a rapid,
telescoped process, in contrast to the 'vulgar Marxism' of Jaures, Guesde and the
Mensheviks, who (wrongly) envisaged 'democracy and socialism ... as two stages in
the development of society which are not only distinct but also separated by great
distances of time from each other': Trotsky (1969, pp. 125-34; quote on p. 131).

synchronic 'snapshot' of the Russian or Mexican Revolutions would make little
sense.18 Again, revolutions are like wars.
Given the contingency and variation of 'revolution', what do we mean by a

'revolutionary tradition'? By definition, it derives from particular circumstances: it
relates to a country, or even a region/group. It also necessarily implies some sort of
longevity, even prescription. Revolutionary (or any other) traditions do not spring
fully-formed like Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus; they are born, they grow
and mature, and they may die (the Mexican 'revolutionary tradition' is, if not
moribund, at least in sad decline; the sesquicentennial of 1848 did not, as far as I
know, stir much popular nostalgia or spontaneous commemoration in Europe).

Even after 'death' occurs at the national level - when regimes decide to to ditch
revolutionary policy, discourse, and myth; when the statues of Lenin are toppled or
Cardenas is excised from Mexican school text books - the 'revolutionary tradition'
may yet linger on in the minds of certain people, in certain regions or sectors of
society. Hence the confident brandishing of revolutionary death certificates should
be avoided: the Chiapas rebellion, with its overt claim to the mantle of Zapatismo,
surprised a Mexico supposedly committed to the new fanti-revolutionary') project
of neo-liberal reform and North American economic integration (Collier and

Quaratiello, 1994; Harvey, 1998).
Despite their inherent contingency and specificity, 'revolutionary traditions'
are amenable to some kind of rough typological analysis. Indeed, such analysis
may be necessary if we are to grasp the phenomenon and relate it to democracy. I
would propose two axes (more could no doubt be introduced). First, a

'revolutionary tradition' can be 'official' or 'unofficial'; that is, it can form part of
an 'official' transcript (in countries where revolutions have succeeded: e.g.,

Mexico or the USSR after 1917, Cuba after 1959); or it can constitute an
'unofficial' or contestatory transcript (in countries where revolutions have not
succeeded: the list is long, of course, but classic Latin American cases would be
Peru and Colombia, neither of which has experienced a genuine popular

revolution, both of which have produced vigorous and durable revolutionary
movements: Sendero Luminoso in Peru, the FARC and the ELN in
Colombia).There is, too, the complicated case of erstwhile revolutionary regimes
- for example, contemporary Russia or, increasingly, contemporary Mexico which have repudiated their 'revolutionary tradition' in favour of a new 'anti-
revolutionary' project , thus enabling dissidents (Zhirinovsky, Subcomandante

Marcos) to take up the discarded banner in opposition to the 'new' regime.
Zhirinovsky and Marcos appeal to 'the people' rather than to the incumbent
government: that is, they do not really expect the government to renounce its
current project and return to the old 'revolutionary tradition'; neither do they
appeal to the government in terms of its own, official, 'public transcript'; rather,
18 Of course, 'snapshots' of the old regime - synchronic analyses of prerevolutionary
structures of power and production - are entirely valid and necessary (consider the
famous first chapter of Macaulay's History ofEngland - in essence, a preamble to the
revolution ofl688). But such snapshots cannot explain the process and outcome of the
subseqiient revolutions.
? 2001 Society for Latin American Studies 153
Alan Knight
they seek a popular mandate to transform state policy or, at the very least, to
extract substantial concessions.1 In the old days of revolutionary orthodoxy,
however, when the revolutionary tradition still held official sway (in both Russia
and Mexico, roughly, from 1917 to the 1980s), this discursive tactic could be
employed against the government itself. So long as revolutions failed to live up to
their promises and proclamations, their 'official transcripts' provide a canon
against which judgements and appeals can be made, whether in the name of the
rights of man, tierra y libertad, or the tenets of socialism (Scott, 1990, p. 54;
Przeworski, 1991, pp. 1-3, which includes good examples and jokes).
Secondly, as this brief ideological menu suggests, it is crucial to flag what kind
of revolution we are talking about. Here, two related clarifications are necessary.
First, for several good reasons the 'great' or 'social' revolutions of history - those
which comfortably fit my previous definition - have usually been, broadly

speaking, popular and progressive in their thrust.20 However, there is a species of
right-wing, conservative, 'counter-revolution' which may also fit a diluted

version of this definition (voluntaristic violent mass mobilization ?? substantial
social and political reordering): the fascist 'revolutions' of interwar Europe; to a
lesser extent the 'bureacratic authoritarian' coups and regimes of the southern
cone of South America in the 1960s and '70s (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay,
Chile). While the 'revolutionary' status of these phenomena will depend on
19 Needless to say, the comparison does not imply any close political kinship between
Marcos and Zhirinosky; nor between Presidents Fox and Putin.
20 I would define 'popular' in terms of the patterns of class support and 'progressive'
(which is a little trickier) in terms of the revolutionary programme and its capacity to
benefit and empower popular groups. Note that formally revolutionary (e.g., Marxist)
programmes are not essential; peasant movements can hitch revolutionary movements
to quite moderate, ostensibly 'reformist' programmes (see Knight, 1986, I, pp. 30915).
21 As I have noted (fn. 16 above), Crahan and Smith (1992, pp. 79-83) concede that
'right-wing revolutions' could fit their broad definition; yet when confronted by
precisely such revolutions, in the shape of southern cone military regimes - which are
violent enough and which, in the authors' own words, 'substantially alter the means
of capital accumulation' and 'bring about profound socioeconomic transformation'

(p.83) - their nerve fails them and they depict such regimes as representing 'not
revolution but ... right-wing repression'. The same could, of course, be said of
Nazism. If we wish to reserve the term 'revolution' purely for progressive or lefist
movements/regimes, we either have to built such a criterion into the initial definition
(a somewhat arbitrary approach, which Crahan and Smith do not adopt), or we have
to infer a necessary leftism/progressivism from the definition as given: for example,
we could argue that only leftist movements/regimes can (a) elicit sufficiently broad
support and (b) promise and enact sufficiently deep 'structural change' to qualify as
truly revolutionary. Such an argument is not without merit, but, I believe, is

ultimately unconvincing. Ask yourself a simple question: was Hitler more
revolutionary than, say, Danton, Zapata, or Vctor Paz Estenssoro (leader of the
Bolivian MNR in 1952)? If you have to pause for thought, you at least credit the
possibility of ugly, repressive, right-wing movements being 'revolutionary', in respect
of both eliciting broad support and achieving profound sociopolitical
transformations.

your definition of 'revolution' (as well as your reading of the historical record), it
cannot be doubted that they too embodied the principles, experiences, myths,
texts, 'transcripts', songs, symbols, heroes, memories, assumptions, and
narratives which together constitute a 'tradition' (or a meme, or a set of
memes). We may, if we wish, refer to them as 'counter-revolutionary traditions':
they have been seen, by some, as formative influences in, for example,
Argentina's historical trajectory.22 While I do not intend to dwell on these cases
- their inclusion would burst the already strained seams of this article - their
existence should be recognised: (a) because they are numerous; (b) because they
exist in dialectical relationship with 'revolutionary' traditions, the one defining
and testing the other (I shall return to this point later); and (c) because they may
even derive from previous revolutionary traditions. That is, as history marches
on, yesterday's revolution (and revolutionary tradition) becomes tomorrow's

counter-revolution (and counter-revolutionary tradition).
This leads to the second clarification. Great revolutions assume different
forms, and various typologies have been proposed. Typologies may relate to class
content ('peasant' as against 'workers' revolutions); to questions of agency

(revolutions 'from above' and 'from below') (Moore, 1969, chaps. 7, 8); to broad
objectives (e.g., 'nationalist' revolutions and wars of national liberation); to
patterns of state-building, as stressed by Skocpol (Skocpol, 1979); or to sui
generis categories, such as Huntington's 'eastern' and 'western' revolutions
(Huntington, 1971, p. 266ff.) While I am quite happy to play the field revolutions may have multiple characteristics, hence may demand multiple
typologies - I would give chief priority to the conventional class approach,
which distinguishes, among the 'great revolutions', between 'bourgeois' and
'socialist' versions. Indeed, this distinction is particularly pertinent in the present
context, since the relationship of 'revolutionary' to 'democratic' traditions is

closely associated with the contrasting 'bourgeois' and 'socialist' forms.
'Bourgeois' revolutions, conventionally and usefully defined, embody (i) the
seizure of power by the bourgeoisie (a somewhat circular argument which begs
22 Shumway (1991) posits a kind of original ideological sin into which Argentina was
born, condemning the country to recurrent authoritarian and exclusionary regimes;
experts are not wholly convinced. Rock (1993) offers a less controversial survey ofthe
nationalist counter-revolutionary tradition.
23 That is not to say that all typologies are equal in explanatory power. Some - even
assuming them to be 'true' (i.e., displaying some reasonable conformity to reality) are largely descriptive and do not therefore shed much light on the why's and
wherefores of revolutions (why they happen, what they accomplish). For example,
Moore's (1969) analysis of the 'three routes' does, I think, embody a series of
reasonably robust and plausible propositions about types of revolution, as does
Goldstone's (1991) demographic model of revolutions in agrarian societies. In
contrast, Skocpol's (1979) assimilation ofthe English, French, and Chinese revolutions
- and their respective causes and consequences - under a state-building rubric seems
to me to be less helpful, since the common criterion is deficient and to a degree
tautological. It may offer a moderately convincing descriptive typology, but I am not
sure it explains a great deal.
Alan Knight
the question of who the bourgeoisie are) and (ii) a programme or project which
addresses bourgeois interests and thus promotes a capitalist market economy, the
free movement of factors of production (hence the abolition of serfdom,

corporate land tenure, and ancien regime monopolies), guarantees for property
and contracts, and (probably) the formation of a (liberal, representative?) nationstate capable of protecting and advancing bourgeois interests (Knight, 1990, p.
184). Such a project, traditionally defined in somewhat narrow politico-economic
terms (indeed, sometimes conceived of both instanteously and

anthropomorphically: the bourgeoisie, Phrygian cap on collective head, storming
the Bastille under the leadership of a bare-bosomed Liberty), is better viewed as a
long process, punctuated, perhaps, by dramatic accelerating events, such as the
fall of the Bastille, and embracing not only political and economic but also
cultural transformation. Thus we arrive at the 'Great Arch' of E.P.Thompson,
further glossed by Corrigan, Sayer, and others. Socialist revolutions, while

involving a comparable transformation in political and economic structures (the
socialization of the means of production, the creation of a command economy, a
supportive cultural project, usually the rule of a single socialist party),25 tend to
be more sudden and purposive, not least because they come equipped with a
revolutionary blueprint.
It is axiomatic - or, at least, common and conventional - to discern a major
difference between the political projects of these two revolutions (and their
ensuing revolutionary traditions), a difference which has to do with democracy.
In simple and familiar terms, the liberal representative (Dahlian) form of

democracy is intimately associated with bourgeois revolutions (which typically
institute such a form); while socialist revolutionaries often repudiate such a form
(as a 'bourgeois sham') and claim - sincerely or hypocritically, as we have noted -
to offer a superior form of (workers', popular, participatory, or direct)
24 See Corrigan and Sayer (1985), which serves as a theoretical optic on Mexican
revolutionary state formation in Joseph and Nugent (1994).
25 I am referring, of course, to Marxist/socialist revolutions, which undertake a decisive
transformation of society and economy, not to social democratic reforms, which

usually do not (as Przeworski, 1991, p. 7, observes: 'social democracy is a program to
mitigate the effects of private ownership and market allocation, not an alternative
project of society'). Of course a social democratic project might be revolutionary in a
suitably back ward, feudal, clerical, authoritarian context (e.g., southern Spain in the
1930s?). As it happens, successful (= durable) socialist revolutions have always been
Marxist/socialist rather than social-democratic, hence the 'rule of a single socialist
party' has been the norm. However, the shortlived Allende experiment was socialist it went beyond social democracy - but it did not impose one-party rule. The apparent
historical incompatibility of (genuine) socialism and electoral democracy is explored
by Przeworksi and Sprague (1986).
26 Here I would agree with Hobsbawm's depiction of bourgeois revolutions as (my

terms) flexible and fungible, but I would see rather more purposiveness - and rather
less 'experiment, groping, and changing of courses' - in socialist revolutions/regimes:
Hobsbawm (1986, pp. 26-7, 30-1).
democracy. It therefore appears to be a conclusion of almost Euclidean

certainty that bourgeois revolutions generate Dahlian democracy, which socialist
revolutions in turn destroy, perhaps in pursuit of a regime that is more genuinely
representative and/or economically equitable.
History, however, does not work like geometry. While there is some truth in
this generalization, at least two sorts of serious deviation from the presumed
norm are apparent. First, even if a liberal democratic order is, as Lenin put it, the
'best political shell' for a bourgeois-capitalist economic order (Barrow, 1993, p.

59), it is not the only one. Early capitalist societies were - for long periods of time
- oligarchic rather than democratic (this would apply as well to eighteenthcentury England as to nineteenth-century Latin America);28 some more mature
capitalist societies have been frankly authoritarian - witness European fascism or
the 'bureaucratic authoritarianism' of the southern cone. Postcolonial Africa is
broadly capitalist but hardly democratic. Perhaps these are transient aberrations;
perhaps, even if the relationship between capitalism and democracy is far from
certain, it is mutually optimal, such that we can talk of an 'elective affinity'

which, in the right circumstances, is happily achieved; perhaps, as I note in
conclusion, the 'right circumstances' currently pertain in Latin America. But the
exceptions are numerous and, in some instances, quite durable. The essential
point was well made by Barrington Moore some thirty years ago: the capitalist
'route to the modern world' did not necessarily lie among the green fields of
liberal democracy; it might also blaze a trail through the deserts of

authoritarianism (Moore, 1969, chap. 8) And history has produced plenty of
relapses, such as Brazil after 1964, where capitalism endured - even flourished while democracy yielded to authoritarianism.
The second deviation is part theoretical, part practical; it also has a particular
relevance for Latin America. Socialist and Marxist atitudes to liberal democracy
have not been uniformly hostile or dismissive. If, for some, it was a bourgeois
sham, for others it offered a means to advance the political and even the
economic interests of the working class. Proponents of the latter course were not
necessarily revisionist disciples of Edouard Bernstein: Marx himself was

ambivalent concerning the potential of 'bourgeois democracy' and plenty of his
followers - 'pluralist Marxists', according to one formulation - have stressed the
potential for exploiting democratic opportunities in the interests of the working
class: 'in countries where the liberal democratic tradition is well established, the
27 As Lenin put it: 'the bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most
democratic republic in which the property and the rule of the bourgeoisie are
preserved, is a machine for the suppression of the toiling millions by small groups of
exploiters': quoted in Przeworski (1991, p. 41). On Latin America, see Dix (1973, p.
283, n. 35).
28 'Oligarchic' is one of several possible labels for nineteenth- and early twentiethcenturies regimes in much of Latin America : Dix (1973, p.268) prefers 'limitedparticipation aristocracies [sicY; Moore (1969, p. 438), in one of his two references to
Latin America, suggests 'authoritarian semi-parliamentary government'; which is
echoed by Mouzelis (1986), one of the best and most systematic of such comparisons.
Alan Knight
"transition to socialism" must utilize the resources of that tradition - the ballot
box, the competitive party system - first to win control of the state and second to
use the state to restructure society' (Held, 1996, pp. 147-52). Long before its
recent conversion to liberalism and corporate capitalism, European social
democracy accommodated to (Dahlian) democratic politics, as did many
Communist parties. In Latin America, too, most Communist parties opted for
democratic participation (when it was allowed them); they spurned quixotic

revolutionary adventurism (such as Che's sally into Bolivia) (Gott, 1973, pp. 498-
514); and Chile witnessed the first election of a democratic Marxist

administration in history. The via chilena therefore offered the possibility of
combining a genuine socialist programme with democratic politics, something
which previous paladins of socialism (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro), victors on the
battlefield rather than at the ballot box, had carefully avoided. The Chilean
experiment, of course, came to a premature and bloody end. However, the
Sandinistas, too, though victors on the battlefield, allowed democratic politics to
proceed, and were in turn voted out of office in 1990.
Hence, the relationship between revolutions and 'revolutionary traditions' on

the one hand, and democratic or authoritarian regimes on the other, is clearly not
invariant; it warrants closer inspection in order to see if recognsable patterns

emerge. In the rest of the paper, therefore, I will address the question in the
context of Latin America, taking a broad perspective in terms of both time

(c.1800 to the present) and space (all Latin America).
2. Latin American liberalism

The Americas in general can be seen, sub specie aeternitatis, as a haven of
liberalism. The principles of 'bourgeois liberalism' - representative government
within the framework of republican nation-states, linked to an economic project
premised on market relations - exerted an early appeal; most clearly in the

Thirteen Colonies/United States, but also south of the Rio Grande. There are two
basic and obvious reasons for this. First, the Americas formed part of Europe's
initial imperial expansion, hence they received the imprint of European values
and practices more deeply and durably than either Africa or Asia. Iberian
America experienced over three centuries of formal European empire; in contrast,
India experienced a century of informal hegemony, followed by a century of

(more-or-less) formal rule; Africa experienced less than a century of formal rule;
and China less than a century of informal hegemony. The European imprint was
especially deep in the American 'Neo-Europes' - typically the outer peripheries,
rather than the old Andean and Mesoamerican heartlands - where the Indian
population was largely eliminated and European settler societies developed: in
Canada, the United States, Uruguay, central Chile, southern Brazil, and littoral
Argentina (Crosbie, 1986, p. 2ff).
The American peripheries - as compared to the American heartlands (typically,
Mexico and Peru) - embodied four characteristics: (i) they were, at least by the
15 o ? 2001 Society for Latin American Studies

late eighteenth century, closely linked to world trade, especially the trade in
primary agricultural commodities (as opposed to bullion);29 (ii) their population
of 'prefabricated' Qollaborators not only traded briskly with Europe, they were
also unusually open to European ideas, including liberalism (hence Tulio

Halpern's aphorism: Argentina was 'born liberal') (Halperin Donghi, 1988); (iii)
the relative absence of a dense Indian population diminished caste and ethnic
barriers, thus making the notion of a uniform citizenry both plausible and
attractive; and (iv) the Catholic Church, which had put down deepest roots in
the more densely populated heartlands, was weaker in the peripheries (as a series
of simple dyadic comparisons suggests: Mexico City/Veracruz; Bogota/

Barranquilla; Quito/Guayaquil). Involvement in world trade made mercantilist
restrictions all the more galling; while the absence of caste divisions, coupled with
the weakness of the Church, encouraged sentiments of home rule and

independence. (Conversely, where the Indian or black population was large and
threatening, colonial rule offered a certain guarantee of white, propertied
interests: as the Cuban elite frankly recognized, contemplating the horrific
example of Haiti, 'Cuba sera espanola o africana') (Martinez Alier, 1977, p. 95). It
is not surprising, therefore, that the cradles of Latin American independence were
to be found in the peripheries - Buenos Aires, Caracas, Santiago - rather than in

the old colonial heartlands (Lima, Mexico City). It was in the periperies, too, that
the example of the United States carried more weight and, indeed, had more
relevance, by virtue of being more directly comparable (Adelman, 1999, p. 87;
Bushnell, 1993, pp. 118-19). Buenos Aires, in particular, displayed a precocious
liberalism, which married free trade, slave emancipation, universal suffrage,
popular patriotism, and notions of republican virtue (Adelman, 1999, p. 90).
What is more, the achievement of independence - a matter of autonomous
heroic action in, for example, the Rio de la Plata and New Granada - generated
29 Buenos Aires was, of course, a major entrepot of the colonial bullion trade, especially
foilowing the Bourbon administrative reforms. However, that trade rapidly declined
with the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and, after 1810, the porteno
economy came to depend on the export of pastoral products: hides, jerked beef,
tallow, and later wool. Indeed, this 'physiocratic' outcome was the declared
preference of independence ideologues like Belgrano: Adelman (1999, pp. 62-3, 69).
30 There is an obvious snag in this argument: precisely because they lacked dense Indian
populations which could be put to profitable work, the American peripheries - from
the Old South down to Buenos Aires - came to rely, in several cases, on black slave
labour, which was hardly conducive to the formation of a comprehensive citizenry,
and which made anti-colonial rebellion downright risky. Indeed, the process of
rebellion - in Venezuela, for example - was strongly influenced by the fact of slavery.
However, two points should be noted: first, the structural hypocrisy of 'bourgeois
liberalism' (seen most starkly in the Thirteen Colonies) could allow slavery and
colonial rebellion to co-exist, at least so long as rebellion did not open the door to
slave insurrection (as it did in Haiti); second, the anti-colonial rebels of Buenos Aires
and Caracas were - unlike their counterparts in Havana - ultimately prepared to
sacrifice slavery on the altar of rebellion and republicanism; either because their
ideological attachment to liberal principles was stronger, or their material attachment
to slave labour was weaker.
Alan Knight
patriotic myths which wove notions of liberalism into the foundation myths of
the new republics. Despite some initial flirtations with monarchy, the Spanish
American nations emerged firmly republican; monarchical experiments proved to
be costly failures; hence there was no dynastic principle to which conservatives or
clericals could make effective appeal. (Andean Indians might hark back to the
Incas: but such indigenous atavism, briefly and bloodily embodied in the Tupac
Amaru revolt of 1780, and sporadically revived in lesser nineteenth-century

revolts, could not but terrify whites and mestizos).31 Republics born in the
context of anticolonial, often antidynastic, struggle carried the imprimatur of
liberalism from the outset: even conservatives, like Ecuador's Garcia Moreno,
who dedicated the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, preached the sovereignty
of the people as the basis of legitimate government (Maiguashca, 1996, p. 101).

Comparatively speaking, from the early nineteenth century Spanish America
lacked monarchs, tsars, tribal kings, and princely states; the principles of
republican government, grounded in anticolonial rebellions, prevailed; and
President Monroe obligingly committed the United States to defend this
republican status quo against European revanchisme.32
Of course, 'republican' does not mean 'democratic'. But, by virtue of

dissolving dynastic, ascriptive principles, and asserting the notion of republican
government, the founding fathers of the Latin American states made subsequent
liberal democratic practices likely if not inevitable. For if the people were
sovereign, how could their sovereignty be expressed but by means of

representative government? Indeed, at the outset, Latin American government
was not only republican, but also liberal and sometimes even democratic. Early
constitutions embodied male suffrage, sometimes a fairly broad male suffrage
(Posada-Carbo, 1996, pp. 4-6ff.; Lopez Alves, 2000, p. 41). Even when, in the
1830s, a reaction set in, leading to a more exclusionary politics, the result was
rarely a principled repudiation of republican government: rather, franchises were
narrowed, elections were fixed, and conservative caudillos seized the reins of
power. But the caudillos - Santa Anna, Rosas, Paez, Portales - remained
republicans, continued to claim popular legitimacy, and never established
enduring dynasties. Furthermore, the inclusionary turn of the 1830s was
followed, around mid-century, by a renewed asssertion of liberal values,
associated with the rise of a new, post-independence generation (Juarez in
Mexico, Mosquera in Colombia, Sarmiento in Argentina) and inspired, in some
measure, by 1848 and the example of European liberalism (Bushnell, 1993, pp.
101-2; Gazmuri, 1992).

31 As a result, the Indian heritage of (Aztec) Mexico and (Inca) Peru had contrasting
consequences; the former could be safely appropriated (in suitably sanitized form) by
creole patriots; the latter was too threatening to serve as a common symbol of
nationhood: Brading (1991, pp. 341-2, 386-90, 455-64, 489-91). When Belgrano
proposed an Inca constitutional monarch to the portenos the proposal, not
surprisingly, 'went nowhere': Adelman (1999, p. 90).
32 Not that Monroe could in practice do much about it; the Monroe Doctrine remained
a rhetorical statement through much of the nineteenth century.
Indeed, the dialectical pattern evident in the first two generations after
independence (liberal opening in the 1810s and '20s; conservative closure in the
1830s; liberal re-opening around mid-century) appears to repeat itself in

subsequent generations: a turn towards more authoritarian and positivistic
regimes in the last quarter of the nineteenth century; greater contestation and
political opening in the early twentieth century (now, some Latin American
polities form part of Huntington's 'first wave' of global democratization); a
renewed authoritarianism in the interwar period (especially after 1930); a
democratic opening in the late 1940s (Huntington's 'second short wave')

(Huntington, 1991, p. 16); the 'new authoritarianism' of the 1960s and '70s
(Collier, 1979); and the recent, almost unanimous, turn towards democracy and
neoliberalism in the 1980s and '90s, Huntington's 'third wave' (Huntington, 1991,
pp. 16, 40ff.). Even if this sequence is open to question - it glosses over major
regional and national variations and takes 'authoritarianism' and 'democracy'
excessively at face value (Von Mettenheim and Malloy, 1996, pp. 2-3) - it
nevertheless illustrates the fact that, for something like six generations,
republican forms of government have remained standard; elections - even when
fixed or postponed - have remained the primary form of legitimation; and, with a
few minor exceptions,33 no man-on-horseback has claimed an indefinite, still less
dynastic, mandate to rule. 4
However, by the twentieth century the political scenario had substantially

changed. Liberalism had been outflanked by doctrines and movements on the left
(socialism, communism, anarchism); the growth of cities, exports, and industry
focused attention on the new 'social question' (Dix, 1973, p. 285; Bushnell, 1993,
pp. 162-3; Knight, 1986,1, p. 148; Collier and Collier, 1991, p. 59ff.) Crudely, one
could say, militant trade unions and incipient radical parties now replaced
belligerent Indians and insurgent peasants as threats to peace and property; and the
traditional promises of liberalism - civil rights, representative government - were
trumped by new socio-economic demands (jobs, wages, land, social insurance). Of

course, demands for material provision or protection were ancient - they went
back at least as far as the land seizures, grain riots, and anti-tax protests of the
colony. What was new was the - actual or advocated - inscription of such
33 The Brazilian monarchy, being oligarchic and constitutional, is not really an
exception; and, anyway, it fell in 1889. Mexico's two emperors - Agustin Iturbide in
the early 1820s and Maximilian in the 1860s -were shortlived failures who served to
reinforce the republican norm. Twentieth-century exceptions - 'sultanistic' regimes
like those of Stroessner in Paraguay, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the Somozas
in Nicaragua, the Duvaliers in Haiti - are 'minor' in that they misruled small
countries, hence only a tiny minority (perhaps 5%) of Latin America's total
population. That, of course, was no consolation for the Paraguayans, Dominicans,
Nicaraguans and Haitians.
34 Though the Somozas and Duvaliers managed two-generation dynasties. Foilowing on
from fn.32, it could be added that by the late nineteenth century the Monroe Doctrine
began to count for something in terms of Realpolitik as well as rhetoric; hence the
export of European dynasties - even if the Latin Americans had wanted them - would
have become more difficult.
Alan Knight
socioeconomic claims within the 'public transcript' of the state: for example, with
Batllismo (1902-6, 1911-15), Lopez Pumarejo's revolucion en marcha, or the

Mexican and Cuban Constitutions of 1917 and 1940 respectively (Lopez Alves,
2000, p. 50; Bushnell, 1993, pp. 185-7; Knight, 1986, II, pp. 470-1; Thomas, 1971,
pp. 716-21). Again, in very schematic terms, one could say that Latin America
mirrored Marshall's formulation of entitlement to rights: initially, liberalism
promised certain basic civil rights; subsequently, broader access to representation
was conceded (i.e., political rights); finally, 'social rights' received recognition.
However, in Latin America, as in much of Europe, this sequence proved highly
contentious in practice. The smoother, social-democratic route (political

liberalism leading to the welfare state), had its rare Latin American counterparts
in Costa Rica and, perhaps, Uruguay (as I mention below). But elsewhere, it
proved difficult to graft social rights on to political and civil rights; indeed, the
demand for social rights - by unions, leftist parties and, later, peasant movements
- often provoked reaction (in the specific sense), political closure, and an
abrogation of rights previously enjoyed. Alternatively - in Mexico (1910), Bolivia
(1952), Cuba (1959), and Nicaragua (1979) - popular demands assumed

revolutionary form, again with mixed results for Dahlian democracy. Civil,
political, and social rights, it seems, do not necessarily develop sequentially, nor
do they co-exist in happy synergy. Their relationship may resemble a zero-sum
game. Thus, to assume, today, that Latin American political democracy is

consolidated and that, according to the logic of Marshallian sequencing, it can
provide the firm foundation for social reform, hence social rights, may be risky.
We need to focus on the relationship between Latin America's longstanding

liberal-democratic tradition(s) and its twentieth-century experience of social
demands, popular mobilization, and outright revolution.
The variants on this relationship are multiple; hence any attempt to synthesize
(rather than to tell a series of detailed but inconclusive 'just-so stories') involves
some ambitious aggregation - or, if you will, some lavish 'lumping' which will
offend single-minded 'splitters'. I shall, furthermore, compound the problem by
straying beyond the 'great' revolutions per se (that is, beyond Mexico, Bolivia,
Cuba and, perhaps, Nicaragua), the rationale for which is that, even if
revolutions are distinctive forms of - rapid, violent, 'bottom-up' - social change,
they nevertheless embody many of the same tensions as non-revolutionary

historical phases; the stage and the dramatis personae may be much the same; it is
the unfolding of the plot that differs. Pursuing the theatrical metaphor, I will
present an initial backdrop, then suggest five major plot-lines, each involving our
chosen themes, revolutionary and democratic 'traditions'.
3. Challenges to liberalism
First, the democratic backdrop. By the turn of the twentieth century all Latin
American countries had become independent republics, boasting liberalrepresentative constitutions (the last monarchy, Brazil, had fallen in 1889; and
the last colony, Cuba, had experienced a flawed independence in 1898).35

However, the degree of genuine democratization varied greatly. In some cases,
notably in Andean America, constitutions embodied property or literacy
qualifications which greatly restricted the electorate; in all cases, women were
denied the vote.36 No less important, constitutions were often honoured in the
breach. Civilian rule was recurrently interrupted by military coup; and elections
were regularly compromised by force and fraud. However, even when generals
seized power they did not usually linger long in office; and when they did, they
did not brazenly dispense with constitutions and elections, but chose instead to
finesse the former and rig the latter. Examples include Porfirio Diaz in Mexico
(1876-1880 and 1884-1911), Juan Vicente Gomez in Venezuela (1909-35), and
Manuel Estrada Cabrera in Guatemala (1898-1920). These fin-de-siecle
authoritarian regimes, it is worth noting, justified their infringement of
democratic practices (though not of democratic principles) in terms of a
positivistic emphasis on material development, which required a strong state,
sound finances, and a disciplined population; democratization had to be

postponed pending the creation of a productive, integrated, modern economy.
Thus, republican, representative government remained the official norm, if not
the actual practice; and, of course, it provided a canon to which liberaldemocratic critics of authoritarian regimes could appeal, with Madero in Mexico
or Rui Barbosa in Brazil (Knight, 1986,1, pp. 56-8, 68-9; Bello, 1966, pp. 211-12).
Where civilian rule and genuine alternation in office occurred, it usually did so
under 'oligarchic' or 'semi-parliamentary' auspices (Mouzelis, 1986, pp. 3-4, 1620, 28-9; Bushnell, 1993, pp. 161-2; Sabato, 1992): that is to say, parties consisted
of narrow coteries of notables and lacked mass membership; elections, though

regular and sometimes quite lively, were usually fought between rival bosses
(caciques, gamonales, coroneles) and their clienteles; the dominant landlord class,
even if it did not provide the bosses,38 could usually rest secure that the political
35 We should note the exceptional case of Puerto Rico, which, following the final
collapse of the last remnants of the Spanish empire in the Americas in 1898, failed to
achieve independence, but became an American protectorate.
36 Following the democratic dawn of the 1810 and '20s, the second quarter of the century
saw a shift towards more restrictive franchises; and, while this closure was followed
by a renewed opening in some states after 1848, the 'Indoamerican' republics of

Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia resisted the democratizing trend: Posada-Carbo (1996, p.
7); Guerra (1996, pp. 18-19). The Colombian province of Velez, governed by a
'radically doctrinaire' Liberal, married to a 'politically forceful wife', voted to extend
the suffrage to women in 1853 (sixteen years before Wyoming initiated the trend in
the United States); but the national Supreme Court annulled the reform before any
Velena could east her vote: Bushnell (1993, pp. 108-9).
37 Though the goals differed, the parallels with authoritarian socialist regimes are
apparent.
38 There was often, it seems, a certain division of labour between the economically and
socially dominant landlord class and the political cadres who ran the electoral
machines; this division was particularly marked when it came to (a) lower-echelon
posts (in Mexico, for example, big landlords more usually occupied governorships
than jefaturas - prefectships) and (b) rich, entrepreneurial landed elites (who
Alan Knight
system would not infringe their basic interests. As a result, oligarchic politics
often allowed genuine scope for debate, a semi-free press and congress, and some
respect for civil rights (notably in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina). Parallels with
Spanish or Italian 'artificial democracy' are apparent; Mouzelis (1986) draws an
illuminating parallel with Balkan Europe.
The progressive democratization of the early twentieth century - the last
impulse of Huntington's 'first wave' - carried some Latin American states beyond
narrowly oligarchic politics to something more fully democratic.39 Significantly,
this occurred in the prosperous southern cone (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile), where
living standards and literacy levels were higher, and traditional ethnic tensions
were weaker.4 Conversely, where large Indian populations predominated,

oligarchic politics tended to remain more narrowly exclusionary and harshly
authoritarian; regimes responded to white/mestizo fears of Indian insurgency and
to the perceived need for repressive labour systems (e.g., Peru, Bolivia,
Guatemala, southern Mexico). Apart from the evident correlation between
income and democracy (Seligson, 1987, pp. 7-9; Huntington, 1991, pp. 60-1), we
may also note a tendency for this deepening of democracy to occur in those
peripheral regions (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile) where anti-colonial liberalism had
flourished at the time of independence; while narrowly oligarchic or

authoritarian politics survived in the old Indian heartlands of Mesoamerica
and the Andes (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia). Thus far, then, the story is
disdained the hurly-burly of electoral politics and did not need the money any way):
here, Argentina is the classic case. See Halperin Donghi (1995, pp. 39-66).
39 Huntington (1991, pp. 14?15) includes four Latin American cases in his 'first wave'
(i.e., pre-1920s democratization): Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. The
point at which 'oligarchic' politics becomes 'democratic' is, of course, moot. (I have
already noted that these infant democracies were based on universal male suffrage:
none enfranchised women). Huntington, pp. 11-12, opts for a dichotomous approach
to the problem of definition (most states are either democracies or they are not);
however, there are, he admits, borderline cases; and the 'sudden' onset of democracy
(e.g., Argentina, where the Saenz Pena law of 1912 reformed the ballot and made
possible the election of a Radical administration in 1916) may not be the norm
(compare Chile or Colombia, where the expansion of a mass electorate, based on a
tradition of vigorous but limited electioneering in the nineteenth century, was more
gradual and incremental).
40 I stress 'traditional', in that the Indian population had been reduced and marginalized,
while slavery had been long abolished and the population of black descent was
(relative to Brazil or Cuba) tiny. European immigration generated new ethnic tensions
(hence the anti-immigrant pogrom - if that is not too strong a word - in Buenos Aires
in 1919). However, only naturalized Argentines had the vote; hence mass suffrage
could advance on the basis of a fairly homogenous (male) citizenry. Above all, free
wage labour prevailed, hence democratization was not barred by systems of serfdom
or peonage ('extra-economic coercion').
41 Thus Markoff (1996, p. 44) is probably even closer to the truth than he realizes when
he states that 'the countries bordering on the Atlantic were the places of the
democratic breakthrough' (he is referring to the incipient liberalization of the
eighteenth century, as experienced in England, France, Holland, and the United
States).

one of relative continuity, incremental change (progress, perhaps?), and a quasiEuropean path. A prior tradition of liberal - i.e., representative, tolerant, civil -
politics lays the foundation for subsequent opening and democratization.

Possibly one could go further (both analytically and chronologically) and suggest
that anti-colonial republicanism, premised on a revolutionary repudiation of

dynastic and ascriptive principles, in turn underwrote that liberal tradition. Saenz
Pena, we might say, owed a good deal to Belgrano and Rivadavia; Argentina's
'guiding fictions' (Shumway, 1991) could promote inclusion as well as exclusion.
Entering the twentieth century, however, the story takes some sharp twists.
(The most obvious twist is that the harshest forms of post-1960 authoritarianism
occur precisely in the previously liberal-democratic trailblazers of the southern
cone). While the story involves a multiplicity of actors and events (some of
external provenance: the two world wars and the depression), a highly schematic
explanation can be suggested. Foilowing the Marshallian sequence, calls for civil
and political rights were now seconded by social demands: for jobs, collective
contracts (and the closed shop), land reform, protected tenancies, social security,
state planning, and the nationalization of the means of production - many of

which were in foreign hands. In short, free-market property and labour relations
were systematically questioned. Beyond espousing these novel demands, some

leftist spokesmen (socialist, communist, anarchist, populist)43 also declared that
bourgeois democracy was a mere sham and that a superior organic or

participatory democracy could be attained. The full triad of Marshallian rights
- civil, political, and social - were, for the first time, on offer. How did this
outflanking of the liberal tradition occur in practice? Schematically, we might
identify five principal paths: social democracy; revolutionary populism; statist
populism; socialist revolution; and authoritarian reaction.
3.1. Social democracy: Uruguay and Costa Rica

First, foilowing the western European social-democratic pattern, the new social
agenda could be grafted on to the old liberal tradition; liberal democracy would
be supplemented by state benefits; the Marshallian sequence would prevail. For
this to occur there needed to be a functioning liberal tradition, coupled with a
state willing and able to manage the necessary transfer payments. Per capita
42 The two countries conventionally thought to have achieved the most 'consolidated'
democracies in South America, as of the 1960s, were Chile and Uruguay (see Dix,
1973, p. 294).
43 I have real doubts about 'populism' as a robust analytical category, especially when it
is used to describe a specific family of movements/regimes in Latin America - rather
than simply a political style which manifests itself across a great swathe of time and
space (see Knight, 1998, pp. 223-48). However, it will serve as a loose - and fairly
conventional - label for movements/regimes that combine (a) mass mobilization; (b)
powerful popular appeal, possibly focused on (c) a charismatic leader; (d) ostensible
(sometimes actual) policies of redistribution; (e) nationalism; but which (f) are not
socialist or communist, nor (usually) impeccably democratic.
Alan Knight
income alone was not a sufficient condition; there had also to be some minimal
prior sociopolitical consensus which would permit such payments. In late

nineteenth-century Uruguay Blancos and Colorados converged around certain
common principles of liberal civilian government, which crystallized in the

'consociational' pact of 1903-33; wool production boosted the economy, but no
'reactionary configuration' of landlords developed; elites roughly agreed on the
distribution of state patronage, both among themselves and for the benefit of the
mass electorate (Lopez Alves, 2000, chap. 2; Gillespie, 1992, pp. 178-80). This
was something of a fair-weather phenomenon, however. Uruguayan democracy
faltered in the 1930s and, following a fragile recovery in the 1940s, entered into
terminal crisis in the 1960s. The 'consolidation' of democracy proved to be

reversible, notwithstanding the added buttress of social welfare.
In Costa Rica, about half a century later, a similar process ensued. Here, too,
the advent of a modest welfare state, linked to a durable democracy, depended on
the outcome of civil war (which in turn hinged on the unexpected death of ex-
president Leon Cortes in 1946) (Yashar, 1997, pp. 170-90). Coffee production
generated both economic resources and a measure of political consensus: not
because - as the tico myth suggests - coffee spawned an egalitarian yeoman
farmer class or was an essentially 'democratic' crop (compare Guatemala) - but
rather because it generated 'an overwhelming society-wide commitment to export
agriculture and coffee culture' which, furthermore, was premised on free wage
labour rather than extra-economic coercion (Gudmundson, 1995, p. 163).

Favorable - but hardly 'over-determined' - preconditions conspired with fortuna
to produce what, following Uruguay's final fall from grace in 1973, remained
Latin America's sole stable democratic welfare state. Furthermore, over time,
Costa Rican democracy acquired a kind of autonomous moral capital - a

'relative autonomy', we might say, of contingent adverse circumstances. Ticos
came to define themselves in terms of their civilian and democratic culture, a
definition that was all the more salient given Costa Rica's location in the cockpit
of Central America.44
3.2. Revolutionary populism: Mexico and Bolivia

Costa Rica achieved this unusual, incremental outcome because a prior liberal
tradition proved capable of accommodating democracy and moderate social
reform. In much of Latin America outside the southern cone, however, liberaldemocratic traditions were - in practice - quite weak. Social reform therefore
entered the agenda before any sort of viable liberal democracy had been
established; and the outcome - in Mexico (1910-), Bolivia (1952-) and, more
tenuously, Guatemala (1945-) and Nicaragua (1979-) - was a form of

44 See Clark (1999). The 'autonomous moral capital' of Costa Rican democracy is
evident in survey data: when given three choices: (i) democracy is preferable to other
forms of government; (ii) it makes no difference either way; and (iii) authoritarian
government is preferable, Costa Ricans score: 80%, 9%, 8%; Chileans: 50%, 28%,
17%; and Mexicans: 50%, 26%, 20% (Hewlett/MORI, 1998, p. 4).

revolutionary populism. I admit to using 'populism' with some disquiet, and in
deference more to common usage than to rigorous analysis.45 By 'populist' I
mean movements and regimes which were progressive, reformist, nationalist, and
(in ways that I will clarify) 'democratic'; but which were neither thoroughly
liberal-democratic, nor thoroughly socialist; hence which avoided wholesale
nationalizations and remained locked within a broadly capitalist economic
system. In each case, revolutionary movements overthrew regimes that were
highly authoritarian, often personalistic (even 'sultanistic'), and deeply racist (the
Porfiriato, the Bolivian rosca, Ubico, Somoza). Indeed, such regimes, denying
legitimate democratic challenges, could only have been overthrown by forms of
mass mobilization: prolonged uprisings in Mexico and Nicaragua; a series of

short popular insurrections in Bolivia; a more piecemeal series of protests and
demonstrations in Guatemala. Prior liberal-democratic traditions were relatively
weak and, in consequence, one of the key planks of the revolutionary-populist
platform was the installation of genuinely democratic government. In each case,
too, mass suffrage ensued: in Bolivia, the exiguous pre-1952 electorate was
dramatically expanded; in Mexico and Guatemala, artificial democacy gave way
(temporarily) to free elections; in Nicaragua democracy eventually made possible
the ouster of the revolutionary-populist (Sandinista) government itself.
In addition to such procedural/electoral/Dahlian advances, these revolutions
also enhanced democracy in a broader, more informal fashion. In Mexico, for
example, popular organizations - sindicatos and peasant leagues in particular took root and acquired genuine power. Parties of notables became mass parties,
susceptible to mass pressure. Education, literacy, and 'cultural democracy'
expanded; populist, nationalist, and indigenous symbols supplanted the elitist
and Europhile symbols of the old regime (Vaughan, 1982, 1997). Old hierarchies
of deference crumbled; landlords and the Church lost influence; and, to their
disgust, upstart peasants and Indians occupied positions of power.46 With this
social bouleversement came a measure of genuine social reform (the provision of
Marshallian social rights): education, labour and land reform, trade union
legislation, some limited social security. The fetters of capitalism were not
broken, but a more open, mobile, egalitarian society emerged. Indeed, if we
adopted conventional {marxisant) terminology, we could well see these as whole or partial - 'bourgeois revolutions', characterised by the break-up of
latifundia, the broad enfranchisement-cum-empowerment of citizens (of all
colours), and the creation of a more integrated, literate, mobile, secular,
productive, and nationalist population (Knight, 1990, pp. 186-9). In other words,
we see, in part, the building of a Mexican - or Bolivian - 'Great Arch' (Knight,
1994, pp. 56-64).
45 'Populism' is used in roughly this sense (and involving several subcategories) in Collier
and Collier (1991, especially chap. 5). Note my caution, n. 43 above.
46 Knight (1986, II, p. 517-27) sketches the 'pre-institutional' phase of this social
upheaval, which is not easily captured in national overviews; a graphic, if far from
typical, local example is provided by Henderson (1998). For a Bolivian example

(Coroico), see McEwen (1975, p. 143ff.).
Alan Knight
Three key aspects of this transformation need to be stressed. First, the

'democratic empowerment' associated with these quasi-bourgeois, 'populist'
revolutions did not involve the simple implementation of Dahlian norms. True,
in some cases this occurred: most clearly in Bolivia after 1952. But in Mexico the
formal democratic opening was brief; in Bolivia it was compromised by the

military coup of 1964; in Guatemala it was brutally terminated by the CIAsupported invasion of 1954. In a broader, informal sense, however, these
revolutions did 'empower' subordinate people: more briefly in Guatemala, more
durably in Bolivia and, a fortiori, Mexico, where access to politics expanded and
old hierarchies were toppled. The Guatemalan counter-revolution partially

turned the clock back; but the Bolivian coup of 1964 was more ambiguous (the
military, for example, continued the agrarian reform); and Mexico experienced
no decisive counter-revolution - indeed, the military regime of Victoriano Huerta
(Mexico's Kornilov?) ended in ignominious defeat in 1914 (Knight, 1986, II, pp.
93-4ff.). These cases confirm that a focus on purely Dahlian democracy is too
narrow and formalistic. Democratic advance - the provision of access,

representation, and 'empowerment' - need not depend solely on the institution
of regular, free and fair elections.
However (my second point) democratic advance which depends largely on a
contingent balance of power - whereby, for example, peasants or workers are
empowered by virtue of their political and military mobilization - runs the risk of
reversal. So it was in Guatemala and Bolivia, where the military seized power in
1954 and 1964 respectively.48 Or, in Mexico, where the balance tipped against
popular interests more gradually, incrementally, and insidiously after 1938. In
none of these cases could the achievements of the revolution be wholly overcome
(though in Guatemala the counter-revolution came close). However, when the
balance tipped, the absence of clear, durable, democratic procedures proved a
major liability: the democratic deficit facilitated military rule in Bolivia and the
47 A good example of popular empowerment is given by Simpson (1937, chap.17), which
describes the success story of the ejido (land reform community) of Octlan. The ejido
of San Juan (chap.7) appears in a less rosy light, but, even here, Simpson notes (p.
108), 'there is a marked difference in the attitude of the ejidatario in San Juan and the
peon, or day labourer. The former exhibits a sense of pride, and a spirit of
independence, which is marked contrast to the servility and fatalistic acceptance of
things-as-they-are on the part of the peon. These ejidatarios have a stake in the
community; they own something about which they can make plans. In a word,
however slow the process, these ejidatarios are on the road to becoming something
new in rural Mexico - citizens'.
48 Which underlines something the Costa Ricans got right: foilowing the civil war of
1948 they abolished the regular army - and turned the chief barracks of San Jose into
the national museum. (They did, however, retain the Civil Guard and proscribe the
Communist Party). Defanging the military seems a fairly simple and straightforward
way of ensuring civilian and (perhaps) democratic rule. Of course, it implies a relative
absence of either internal or external 'threats'. After the 1952 revolution the Bolivian
government came close to abolishing the army; but, as instability and working class
militancy increased, the army was reconstituted, making possible the military coup of
1964.
consolidation of a corrupt, semi-authoritarian, and increasingly conservative

regime in Mexico. Thus, while populist revolutions could informally enhance
democracy and empowerment, their failure to implement democratic rules,
structures, and practices made counter-revolution - whether outright or
piecemeal - eminently feasible.
Third, just as these revolutions toppled narrow, authoritarian regimes, so they
occurred in relatively poor, ethnically divided societies. This posed the

revolutionary regimes formidable problems: it was not a question of
redistributing existing wealth, but of boosting development and, indeed, of
building a state and a nation - forjando patria fforging a fatherland') in the
words of Mexico's Manuel Gamio (Gamio, 1916). Where Marx had
optimistically envisaged revolutionaries seizing advanced states and socializing
advanced means of production, revolutionaries in Mexico, Bolivia and Nicaragua
(less so Cuba) took control of brittle states and backward economies. The
Mexican revolutionary regime, for all its faults and failings, made substantial
progress: growth was sustained, national integration progressed. Bolivia's MNR
certainly helped forjar patria-, but it found itself caught in the classic dilemma of
reformist governments in poor - and even not-so-poor - countries: rapid

redistribution fuelled inflation and foreign debt; financial orthodoxy betrayed the
revolution and fractured the revolutionary coalition. Hence the 1964 coup
(Mitchell, 1977). The comparison with Costa Rica is apt: the 1948 revolution not
only 'empowered'; it also eliminated the threat of the military and established
durable, democratic rules; democracy became 'the only game in town'

(Przeworski, 1992, p. 28). In addition, as I have suggested, Costa Rica, though
hardly rich, enjoyed a level of income and equality which made the provision of
social benefits feasible, both politically and fiscally. Costa Rica could therefore
accomplish the difficult task of eliding formal democratic consolidation and

genuine social provision; in Mexico and Bolivia, revolutionary empowerment did
not translate into formal democratic consolidation; and genuine social provision
was limited by the relative poverty of the country, especially in the Bolivian case.
3.3. Statist populism: Argentina

Many of the changes ushered in by revolution in Mexico and Bolivia - greater
political access, labour reform, social provision, national integration, the erosion
49 Again, Costa Rica is the contrasting case. In Chile, the existence of established
'democratic rules and structures' could not prevent the 1973 coup. Mexico
experienced a kind of mild Thermidor after 1938, as popular reforms and movements
faded and a more conservative, business-friendly, 'institutional-revolutionary' regime
was consolidated. It did not promote liberal democracy (at least, not until very
recently). However, it did keep the military in check (hence, no coup as in Bolivia);
and it retained something of its old popular/populist character - evident in sporadic
bouts of land reform and economic nationalism. As late as the 1990s the regime's
reluctance to hurl tanks and helicopter gunships against the EZLN probably had
something to do with its residual popular/populist self-image.

Alan Knight
of deference - had their counterparts in the major countries of South America,
notably Brazil and, a fortiori, Argentina, where they were associated with
Varguismo and Peronism.50 Peronism, in particular, brought the Argentine
working class both material benefits and a sense of political empowerment and
inclusion (James, 1988). Indeed, the material benefits were substantial, given
Argentina's relatively high level of income (compared to Mexico, Bolivia, even
Costa Rica) and the public assets which had accumulated during the second
world war (Ferns, 1973, pp. 147-8). Thus, while it would be stretching the term
to call Peronism 'revolutionary' - Peron's rise to power did not involve a violent
'revolutionary' process, and his regime, for all its populist reform, did not achieve
a major structural transformation of Argentine society - nevertheless, Peronism
shared some of the characteristics of Mexico's or Bolivia's revolution. Thus,

some fifty years before Tony Blair, Peronismo claimed to be pioneering a 'third
way' between liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism; and, in its stress on social
rights and popular empowerment, Peronismo went beyond hollow rhetoric. As a
veteran dockworker from Rosario recalled, comparing working-class life before

and after the watershed of 1943-6: 'with Peron we were all machos' (James, 1988,
P- 29).
But, apart from those just mentioned, there is another significant difference
which sets the Mexican or Bolivian 'revolutionary populist' projects apart from
the 'statist populist' project of Peronism. Prerevolutionary Mexico and Bolivia
were oligarchical/authoritarian states, whose demise, at the hands of popular
revolutionaries, opened the way to substantial political mobilization and what I
have termed informal (as well as some formal) democratization. The Mexican
and Bolivian 'political nations' grew substantially post-1910 and post-1952
(respectively). It would be a reasonable, if crude, assessment, therefore, that these
were 'progressive' or 'empowering' revolutions.5 Or, in the terms of our

discussion, these revolutions enhanced both political and social rights. The case
of Peronism - not to mention Varguismo - is much more ambivalent. It is not just
that Peronist democracy was inherently flawed, by virtue of its mounting

corruption, personalism and arbitrary abuse of power (all of which were also
evident in postrevolutionary Mexico and Bolivia); rather, the difference lies in the
status quo ante - the Peronist point of departure, and the yardstick against which
Peronist 'democracy' should be judged. While, it is true, the immediately

preceding regime - which ruled during the 'infamous decade' - was conservative,
exclusionary, and, to a degree, oligarchic (Collier and Collier, 1991, pp. 154?5;
James, 1988, pp. 17-17; Rock, 1993, p. 88ff), a broader consideration of pre-1930
50 'Numerous and varying experiments in populist and/or corporative organization have
sought to achieve the goals of revolution without undergoing the process of
revolution': Crahan and Smith (1992, p. 80).

51 The duration of this empowerment is, of course, important: in Mexico, the process
lasted at least a generation - beginning in the 1910s and culminating in the mid-1930s.
In Bolivia, the process was relatively shorter: stirrings were evident in the 1930s and
'40s; the revolution occurred in 1952; but retreat - or 'closure' - were apparent even
before the 1964 coup.

Argentina reveals a record of democratic inclusion, competitive electoral politics,
free speech and relatively free association. Thus, within the broad sweep of the
twentieth century, Peronism appears as socially progressive, but politically

ambiguous. Of course, this judgement - and its basic premise, that social and
civil rights can be neatly separated - are open to question: as one Peronist worker
put it, when asked by a middle-class interlocutor whether the advent of Peron did
not threaten basic liberties: 'freedom of speech is to do with you people. We have
never had it' (James, 1988, p. 17). In simple terms, Peronism represented a tradeoff: a curtailment of Dahlian democracy (at least compared to the pre-1930 status
quo), in return for social benefits and (non-Dahlian) political inclusion. Not
surprisingly, some critical observers have - rather too glibly - drawn a parallel
with European fascism, which could be seen as embodying a similar trade-off

(Lipset, 1963). (We may note in passing that the workers are not the only parties
to this sort of Faustian bargain: the French and the German liberal bourgeoisies
struck similar deals, with Napoleon III and Bismarck repectively). In Argentina
the long-term price was high: Peronism polarized society, compromised its early
'empowerment' of the working class, yet failed to restore the liberal-democratic
status quo ante (1930). It therefore left a legacy of political tension, institutional
weakness, and military intervention.
3.4. Socialist Revolution: Cuba
It is something of a cliche that Latin America, for all its supposed record of social
inequity, political violence, and outright revolution, has had only one 'successful'
thorough-going socialist revolution (Crahan and Smith, 1992, pp. 78-80; Dix,
1973, p. 287). Both the Mexican and Bolivian revolutions, already mentioned,
embodied some radical (anarchist, socialist and communist) elements; but in both
cases these were subordinate to nationalist and populist reformers who, for all
their radical rhetoric, did not seriously envisage a transition to socialism. Indeed,
as I have argued, given the character of ancien rgime Mexico and Bolivia, a
'bourgeois' (democratic, nationalist, agrarian) revolution was radical enough in
itself. The Mexicans, we might say, were content to remain Mensheviks. As a
result, the ensuing revolutionary regimes faced inevitable constraints: what Nora
Hamilton has referred to as the 'limits of state autonomy', limits set by the
enduring capitalist context (Hamilton, 1982). Both domestic and international
'bourgeoisies' - or, as I would prefer to put it, in more impersonal terms, the
imperatives of both domestic and international capitalism - seriously inhibited
the action of these revolutionary states (especially the Bolivian state, which
52 The blame cannot be laid wholly or even primarily at the door of Peronism. Not only
was Peronism the product of what had gone before (the 'infamous decade' - the work
of conservative and military interests); it also became the bete noire of those interests,
who resolved first to oust it and then to bar it from power sine die. After 1955,
therefore, Argentine democracy existed on sufferance: in crude terms, the right would
tolerate it only so long as the Peronistas were ostracized. Peru faced a similar
obstruction in the antagonistic relationship between the military and APRA.
Alan Knight
suffered from a debilitating dependency on tin production and export) (Lehman,
1996).
The Cuban revolution, which in its early days bore comparison (ideologically)
with the Mexican, Bolivian, or Guatemalan, broke from its capitalist moorings
and charted a radical course towards socialism. The reasons for this unusual
outcome, which have been much debated, sometimes in terms of Fidel's inner
cogitations, I shall for the moment leave aside. The immediate task is to locate
the outcome within the terms of our discussion. Clearly, the Cuban revolution
represents a stark trade-off between Dahlian democracy (which was roundly

repudiated) and social rights or benefits (which were significantly advanced). To
a much greater extent than either Peronism or the PRI, Castro's regime crushed
opposition, created a one-party state, socialized the means of production, and
improved health, literacy, and material living standards for the majority of
Cubans. 3 In doing so, the regime eliminated a political system which, though
corrupt and violent, had a genuine record of democratic participation and
pluralism. Indeed, the parallel with Argentina is notable: while the Cuban
Revolution, like Peronism, came in the wake of an authoritarian episode (the
'infamous decade'; the Batista dictatorship of 1952-9), a broader perspective on
Cuba, like Argentina, reveals a more pluralistic, competitive (albeit corrupt)
electoral politics, going back to the early twentieth century.
Material improvement therefore accompanied political closure. Social rights

trumped political rights. Two pertinent questions arise: (i) was political closure a
necessary price to be paid for material improvement? and (ii) was the elimination
of formal, Dahlian democracy offset by a degree of informal popular

empowerment, as I have argued for Mexico, Bolivia, and even Argentina?
The argument that material improvements require a turn towards

authoritarianism or - a less robust argument - that authoritarianism accelerates
material advance is, of course, an old one. Similar questions arise in respect of the
Russian and Chinese Revolutions (not to mention authoritarian regimes of the
right). Any answer should distinguish between (a) material growth per se, i.e., per
capita GDP growth (for which revolutionary Cuba was not notable); and (b)
welfare (for which it was). Absent a revolution, Cuba would probably have
grown at least as fast, but with significantly less welfare provision. The general
proposition that growth requires authoritarian measures (e.g., Stalinist

collectivization and planning) and that democracy inhibits growth (thus in
India, compared to China, 'some sacrifice in speed ... is necessary for the sake of
democracy': Moore, 1969, p. 407) cannot, I think, be elevated to the status of a
universal principle. Outcomes depend on (a) the nature of the model (the USSR
and Taiwan both combined growth and authoritarianism, but the economic
53 As Dix notes (1973, p. 283): 'not the least among the unique aspects of the Castro
government in Cuba within the spectrum of Latin American political behaviour has
been its failure to give at least lip service to elections as the ultimate legitimator of
government'. For a careful comparative study of the welfare implications of the

Cuban Revolution (and others), see Eckstein (1983).

model was radically different); (b) the international context (crucial in the Cuban
case); and (c) the time-frame: authoritarianism may achieve dramatic economic
spurts, but these seem to lead to subsequent longueurs.
As for the second question (did informal empowerment compensate for the
loss of formal Dahlian democracy?), it is a tricky one, best left to experts who can
evaluate the 'informal' - hence, by definition, the elusive and non-quantifiable features of a political system. However, my uneducated guess would be that in
Cuba very limited compensation occurred. The political organizations of the

Cuban Revolution - the 26th of July Movement, the Cuban Communist Party
(PCC), the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR), the Organs of
Popular Power (OPP) - all have a strongly 'democratic-centralist' quality to them
(Rabkin, 1985; Ritter, 1985; Perez-Stable, 1999). Furthermore, the Cuban

revolution cannot claim to have destroyed a retrograde feudalism, a narrow
racist oligarchy, or an exclusionary politico-clerical hierarchy, for none of these
existed in Cuba in the 1950s. At the very least, any defence of the revolution, and
its repudiation of procedural democracy, must be based primarily on material

betterment (including health and literacy) rather than informal political
empowerment.54 The same would be true, I assume, of the Russian or Chinese
revolutions. The latter, however, took power in (feudal? absolutist?) societies,
ruled by dynastic states, where established 'democratic traditions' were weak;
whereas Cuba was a patria forjada with a long, if chequered, record of electoral
competition and political pluralism. The political price of the trade-off was
correspondingly greater.
A fuller discussion of the trade-off would involve both a normative and a
counter-factual question. The first question - was the price worth it? - is a moral
or philosophical one, which historians (especially historians who do not live in

Cuba) should not try to answer, since any answer would reflect subjective norms.
At best the terms of the trade-off can be clarified. The second - counter-factual -
question does fall within the historian's remit, but is notoriously difficult to
answer: why was the trade-off made, why were political, material, and welfare
rights apparently locked within a zero-sum game? Paraphrasing Alec Nove: Was
Castro Really Necessary? (Nove, 1964). As I mentioned at the outset, the

derogation of democratic rights by socialist regimes could, in schematic terms, be
attributed to at least three causes: the hypocrisy of the leaders (whose initial
democratic promises were hollow); the insidious influence of power (which
turned genuine democrats into power-hungry autocrats); and - the biggest catchall of causes and alibis - 'external' forces, that is, forces beyond the control of the
revolutionaries, which drove them - well-meaning democrats though they may
have been - to adopt authoritarian poses.
54 There is a third criterion of government which, perhaps because it is difficult to

measure, usually gets less attention: public probity (or lack of corruption). It may be
damning with faint praise, but Castro's regime, on this criterion, clearly outshines
Batista's.
Alan Knight
In Castro's case all three causes are relevant. 5 Castro's upbringing and prerevolutionary career - son of a tough Gallego immigrant, pupil of the Jesuits,
supposed admirer of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, student politico-cumpistolero - were hardly conducive to a democratic temper (Thomas, 1971, pp.
803-12). His conquest of power, which seemed to confirm the efficacy of

revolutionary vanguardism and voluntarism, shaped the character of the (early)
regime, which was further reinforced by the Bay of Pigs invasion. Economic
planning was infused with the 'spirit of the Sierra' (Dumont, 1970, pp. 29-30, 75).
Once in power, Castro faced opposition both within and without Cuba: 'counterrevolution' in Camagiiey, for example (Thomas, 1971, pp. 1238, 1244-5), and the
United States' policy of economic strangulation and political subversion. Given
Castro's character and background, it is not surprising that he reacted to

opposition - foreign and domestic - both aggressively and incrementally. His
conduct is therefore explicable; and there is no need to invoke paranoia or

psychopathology by way of explanation (as I assume there might be in the case of
Stalin). However, 'explicable' does not mean 'inevitable', in the sense of ruling
out all counter-factual alternatives. Cuba's prerevolutionary social and political
structure, I have suggested, did not mandate an authoritarian revolution:

democratic traditions and mass organizations existed; the economy was well
developed, by Latin American standards; and much of the basic - bourgeois? spadework of nation-formation had been done. That the Cuban regime did not
have to 'forge a fatherland' arguably freed its hands for forging socialism instead.
That it chose an authoritarian version of socialism is not surprising, especially in
view of United States pressure. However, the structural preconditions of a more
democratic socialism were present in Cuba, to a greater extent than in either
Russia or China. In terms of domestic political economy, Stalin was more

'necessary' than Castro. US policy, however, made (and makes) Castro, and
Cuban Communism, 'necessary', in the sense of closing off alternative democratic and social-democratic - options.
3.5. Authoritarian reaction and its limits
I have left the most common syndrome to last. If socialist revolution is unique in
Latin America - while revolution is rare, and statist populisms are sporadic authoritarian reactions are common. They occur precisely as reactions to the four
forms of reform/mobilization already discussed (hence they are about as common
as all four put together); but they also occur in the absence of such leftist
provocations. While some military coups - Guatemala, 1954; Brazil, 1964; Chile,
1973 - were clearly prompted by the threat of radicalism (suitably exaggerated and
55 I am framing the question in excessively individual terms - was Stalin, or Castro,
really necessary? - when, of course, the options and decisions involve a multitude of
actors. However, these particular counter-factual considerations, relating to
authoritarian regimes, do place an unusual premium on individual psychology and

decision-making. It is perhaps ironic that 'great men' count for more than 'general
forces' in Marxist rather than bourgeois politics.

demonized, no doubt), others could claim no such immediate causal stimulus (e.g.,
Uruguay, 1973) (Rouquie, 1987, p. 249). The military coup which ousted Madero
in Mexico in 1913 responded less to Maderista radicalism than to Maderista

incapacity (Knight, 1986, I, pp. 470-2). And, in Peru and Ecuador, of course,
military coups embodied - rather than resisted - radical nationalist notions.56
While it may be possible to draw an analytical distinction between

authoritarian 'reactions' that are literally 'reactionary' (i.e., immediate reactions
to 'provocative' progressive change) and those which reveal a more far-sighted,
'constructive', or 'foundational' character (i.e., which go beyond the immediate
elimination of the progressive challenge and look to a more enduring

conservative or counter-revolutionary project), these are chiefly differences of
degree: the more far-sighted, 'foundational' policies may well be means to ensure
the enduring victory of the right and the definitive defeat of the left.57 They
represent authoritarian surgery rather than band-aid. Hence they typically

involve both political padlocks (measures designed to protect the 'reserve
domains' of the right: for example, the Chilean constitutional provisions
protecting Pinochet and the army) and also economic padlocks, designed to lock
in place free market principles and to prevent a return to 'economic populism'
(hence, policies of privatization, free trade agreements, restrictions on trade

union power, the establishment of independent central banks). Whether short-
or long-term in conception, immediately 'reactionary' or farsightedly

'foundational', such authoritarian reactions are premised on the need to roll
back the left. As Fernando Henrique Cardoso, writing in the late 1970s, observed,
'it was the reaction against the possibility of socialism that culminated in the
present "Thermidor" in Latin America' (Cardoso, 1979, p. 44).
However, in Latin America - in contrast, I think, to China, Russia, or much of
Asia - the rolling back of the left usually retains at least some minimal
democratic character. The praetorian gravediggers of democracy do not claim to
be burying democracy for good. Nor do they aspire to establish absolutist

dynasties.59 They may, on the one hand, claim to represent a superior democracy
(Christian, corporatist, purged of Marxist contagion) (Loveman, 1997, p. 427);

56 These examples - of 'praetorian populism?' - would not doubt warrant further
analysis; but, for want of space and expertise, I merely mention them in passing.
57 As such, they can be quite far-reaching, even radical: Crahan and Smith (1992, p. 83).
58 My 'padlocks' (derived from the Mexican use of candados) are roughly equivalent to
J. Samuel Valenzuela's 'reserve domains' (1992, pp. 65-7, where the author discusses
Chilean political padlocks); examples of economic padlocking would include the

measures taken by the Banzer administration in Bolivia (1971-8) which 'dismantled
the apparatus of protection, pared down state enterprise, scythed through welfare
expenditure, and made a frontal assault on wages': Dunkerley (1997, p. 355). Needless
to say, it does not require an authoritarian regime to impose padlocks; but maybe it
helps. Hence the turn to - laisser-faire, free-market, individualist - 'neo-liberalism'
was (paradoxically?) associated with heavy-handed authoritarianism in much of Latin
America.
59 The Somozas and Duvaliers may be exceptions, but they did not 'roll back'
functioning liberal democracies in the first place.
Alan Knight
but even so, they rarely if ever dispense indefinitely with the mechanisms of
procedural democracy. Even the Pinochet regime - more authoritarian and even
personalist than most - laid down a rough timetable for military disengagement
and progressive liberalization (Collier, 1999, pp. 150-1). The Brazilian military
orchestrated a prolonged, incremental liberalization, as did the Uruguayan

(Stepan, 1971, pp. 217-19; Collier, 1999, pp. 138-9). Latin American military
leaders who have tempted hubris by predicting long tenures of power (for
example, Bolivia's Garcia Meza: 'I will stay in power for twenty years until
Bolivia is reconstructed') have usually been disappointed; Garcia Meza lasted a
year and eighteen days, shortly after which 'the endeavor to impose an organic
dictatorship and eradicate all vestiges of the democratic interlude ... collapsed'
(Dunkerley, 1997, p. 378).
Even when the military dug in its heels, it proved vulnerable to democratic
pushing and shoving; thus, the limited openings allowed by authoritarian regimes
were soon converted into democratic breaches: for example, the Chilean
plebiscite of 1988, which took Pinochet by surprise (Huntington, 1991, pp. 176-8;
Collier, 1999, pp. 151, 155). In the military infighting which characterised
Argentina in the mid-1960s, the 'more democratic, professionalist' faction of the
army (the 'legalists', or 'blues') triumphed over the 'dictatorial gorillas' (reds)
(O'Donnell, 1978, pp. 164-70). Pressures of this kind made possible the rapid
turnaround of the last twenty years, whereby authoritarian regimes have given
way to democratic in eight out of ten South American republics (Markoff, 1996,
pp. 142-5). Significantly, the most durable authoritarian regimes have been
civilian, rather than military, in make-up: the patrimonial, 'sultanistic' regimes of
Stroessner and the Somozas (Chehabi and Linz, 1998); and the peculiar regime of
Mexico's PRI, which, in its heyday, represented a kind of routinized,

'inclusionary-authoritarian' populism, based on civilian camarillas and clienteles,
invulnerable to military intervention (Purcell and Purcell, 1980). Thus, durable
authoritarian rule is exceptional; and durable raz/itary-authoritarian rule is very
exceptional. Before we get too self-congratulatory, however, we should recall
that democratization processes have typically been 'padlocked', in the ways

already mentioned. Indeed, in recent years the 'padlocks' have tended to get
thicker and more unpickable. That is to say, recent military withdrawals from
rule have been accompanied by policies designed to remove the original reasons
for military intervention (radicalism, Marxism, 'economic populism', militant
unionism, peasant mobilization, threats to the army as an institution). Previous
military withdrawals largely lacked such guarantees; hence, notably in Argentina,
praetorianism tended to become a recurrent feature of political life (Rouquie,
1987, p. 272ff.). Indeed, it has even been suggested that recent scholarship on
democratization (of which there is no shortage) both embodies and endorses this
'padlocking' process.60
60 According to Paul Cammack (2000, p. 405), 'O'Donnell and Schmitter ... make
perfectly clear (as do Linz and Stepan) that they choose to stress elite strategy over
structure because democracy will only work if the capacity of the left and working-
There are four principal reasons why authoritarian rule cannot survive
indefinitely. First, it faces popular pressure - demands for the restoration of
democracy from citizens groups, trade unions, parties (where permitted),
churches, and the 'new social movements', all of which can appeal to an
established democratic canon. However, the 'received wisdom' suggests that the
role of 'bottom-up' pressure in the restoration of democracy in twentieth-century
Latin America is not equivalent to its role in the introduction of democracy in
nineteenth-century Europe.61 The political hydraulics of the first and third waves
therefore differ; popular and working-class demands - demands for the

concession of new democratic rights, rather than the restoration of old - played
a greater role in the European context. A partial explanation for this (assuming it
to be true) is the relative weakness of the organized working class in late

twentieth-century Latin America, which in turn reflects basic features of
demography and political economy.
Conversely (my second reason), elite politicking appears to figure very

prominently in the recent Latin American experience. While elite motives are no
doubt mixed (I shall adduce three principal 'motives'), there is clearly an

expedient domestic rationale for some elites to favour a return to democracy,
even if they initially supported authoritarian solutions, as they often did. As the
threat of the left fades, the threat of authoritarianism remains, and may grow.
For authoritarian regimes, even if they respond to elite and propertied interests,
do not faithfully represent them; on the contrary, modern - bureaucratic? authoritarian regimes usually enjoy a substantial 'relative autonomy', hence are
quite capable of offending elite interests: by embarking on ill-judged economic
experiments (or, in the case of Argentina, even more ill-judged wars) (Acuna,
1995, p. 43); by arresting and torturing members of elite families; and, in general,
by displaying a hardboiled indifference to elite restraints and preferences - in
which respect they resemble the fascist regimes of interwar Europe. We might
call this the 'witch-craze syndrome': elites may be gung-ho for rooting out
deviance while the victims are 'the other'; but when the witchfinders start
knocking on elite doors, the craze loses much of its appeal (Philip, 1985, pp. 1423; cf. Trevor-Roper, 1969, pp. 189-90). Hence elite interests, however gratified by
the elimination of the left, may sooner or later come to see the authoritarian
incumbents as threats in their own right (no pun intended). Conversely, a
class forces to shape it is limited'; hence, Cammack concludes, their 'neutral
contribution to political science' is, in fact, 'a highly ideological intervention in
contemporary politics'.
61 Collier (1999, p. 13); although the author, it should be stressed, questions this
'received wisdom'.
62 This is particularly true of leftist authoritarian regimes (e.g., Peru, Ecuador); however,
even those on the right (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay) do not faithfully and
consistently reflect elite/propertied interests. I should preemptively concede that 'elite/
propertied interests' is a form of unsatisfactory shorthand which demands further

disaggregation and clarification.
63 Especially the Nazi regime, whose 'relative autonomy' of elite interests was greater
than that of Italian fascism.
Alan Knight
democratic regime - especially one that is suitably 'padlocked' - offers protection
and reassurance to elite interests.
However, domestic expedience is not the sole factor at work. External international - opinion and pressure can count. Again, this is no constant: the US
- the primary external actor - welcomed the Brazilian and Chilean coups; but
later exerted pressure for a return to democracy. 4 US thinking in this sense
roughly paralleled that of domestic elites: authoritarian rule was preferable to
supposed chaos or communism; but a moderate padlocked democracy was better
than either, in terms of both normative values and practical politics. And, of
course, domestic elites had a strong interest in aligning with US and international
financial opinion. Democracy meant credit, trade, and investment. NAFTA

cannot be credited with engendering Mexico's democratic transition (whose
origins long antedate NAFTA), but, since 1994, NAFTA has probably nudged the
process along and deterred egregious relapses.
Finally, with the fourth motive, the 'democratic tradition' re-enters the
picture. I would concede a significant measure of non-expedient, noninstrumental motivation - on the part of both domestic and international actors
alike. Democracy, for some, is an end in itself; the best way of doing politics; or,
at any rate, the least bad way. While democracy may - in the right circumstances
- offer elites greater economic, political and personal security (from which
standpoint it may be usefully analysed in terms of rational expectations, even of
game theory) (Przeworski, 1992, pp. 105-52), it may also acquire - in the right
circumstances - an intrinsic value over and above such instrumental
considerations. In such circumstances, we could speak of the 'relative

autonomy' of democracy with regard to (hostile) contingent circumstances.
Where democracy is strong - or example, in interwar Britain or the US - the
relative autonomy of democacy will see it through hard times; where it is weak
(Weimar Germany, Taisho Japan), it will collapse in the face of crisis, specifically
when elites and propertied classes decide that their interests are better served by
an authoritarian alternative. (It could, of course, be argued that the key variable
in this inter-war comparison was not the autonomous strength or weakness of

64 For an interesting attempt to explain this apparent inconsistency, by invoking a
distinction between (Latin American) states and regimes, and (US) strategy and
tactics, see Petras and Morley (1990, chap. 4).
65 The instrumental-affective distinction is useful in general terms but on closer
inspection may be problematic: what may look like an affective attachment to
democracy - for example, on the part of elites who, say, tolerate an elected reformist
government which prejudices their interests - may embody a good deal of long-term
as against short-term instrumentality: that is, by tolerating reform and not upping the
ante, elites may avert a worse fate (such as the guillotine), and look to the day when a
different elected government serves their interests. In other words, mutual toleration
may reflect affective, autonomous values, or calculated long-term self-interest. Cases
would have to be judged on their merits, by suitable experts. However, it could be
hypothesized that, over time, long-term instrumentality may afford the basis for
durable affective values: perhaps such an evolution helps explain Costa Rican
exceptionalism.

democracy, but the strength or weakness of the economic collapse and the related
threat from the left. However, it would be an extreme economism which

conceded no weight to autonomous democratic values).
It is, of course, very difficult to determine the relative autonomy of democracy
with regard to circumstances; it is a way of rephrasing that old but, in my my
view, indifferently answered question: when is democracy 'consolidated', when
does it become the 'only game in town'? Survey data suggest that in much of
('democratic') Latin America, contingency remains strong, hence the relative
autonomy of democracy is limited (Costa Rica appears to be a clear exception:
see n. 44). Brazilian businessmen, it seems, adopt a largely instrumental view of
democracy: while minorities prefer (on principle) either democratic or

authoritarian rule, the majority 'is indifferent to political systems' (Payne,
1995, pp. 243-4). To put it differently: the 'democratic tradition' in Latin
America, though rich and enduring in terms of its historical record, remains
somewhat at the mercy of contingent events. At the moment, events favour
democratic survival, maybe consolidation. Strong padlocks help. But events
change (perhaps they are changing in Venezuela), and changing events may test
the 'relative autonomy' of democracy, the strength of the 'democratic tradition',
in the future as in the past. They will reveal whether democracy remains an
instrumental recourse, one of several options within a broader tactical repertoire,
or whether it has indeed become 'the only game in town', whose rules all the
major players respect come what may.
4. The limits of reform and revolution

The four factors which, I have suggested, may challenge authoritarian rule popular and elite opposition, external pressure/opinion, and an 'autonomous'
attachment to democratic procedures - also apply in the case of radical regimes
(usually populist, occasionally socialist). It is clearly a naive myth to assume that
the 'popular classes' necessarily support popular, progressive, or radical

governments (that is, governments which are attempting to expand political
representation, or to meddle with the market in the interests of equity and
welfare). Popular opposition may derive from economic upheaval (hence the
housewives of Santiago banging their pots and pans) or from ideological

antipathy (e.g., Mexico's Cristeros and Sinarquistas, who resisted revolutionary
anticlericalism in the 1920s and '30s). Even more clearly, propertied and elite
interests can mobilize mass opposition: what they may lack in sheer numbers they
can (often) make up in terms of financial resources, elite political contacts

(including links to the military and bureaucracy), access to the media (a factor of
growing importance), and useful external liaisons (Payne, 1995, pp. 240-1). Such
liaisons, I have suggested, may be ambivalent and shifting: the US has alternately
and capriciously backed both authoritarian and democratic forces in Latin

America. Finally, the 'relatively autonomous' strength - the intrinsic, affective
appeal - of procedural democracy can be marshalled in opposition to progressive
Alan Knight
as well as to conservative governments: it helped scupper the Sandinistas; it helps
marginalize Cuba; and, given the inherent limitations of procedural democracy especially, its strict demarcation of public and private, of politics and the market
(Wood, 1995, chap. 1) - it can be deployed in order to resist policies of

redistribution, state intervention, and so-called 'economic populism' (Dornbusch
and Edwards, 1991).

Thus, would-be socialist governments have faced a serious dilemma. They can
compromise with capitalism and conservative interests, limiting their role to that
of reformist social democracy, or its anaemic latter-day progeny, the 'Third

Way'. However, even social democratic and reformist/populist governments may
encounter severe resistance and obstruction: consider Weimar, Cardenismo, early
Peronism, the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan revolutions. Such cases illustrate, in

flesh-and-blood terms, the 'structural dependence of the state on capital' or 'the
limits of state autonomy' (Barrow, 1993, pp. 58-63; Hamilton, 1982). Genuinely
reformist regimes - whether of electoral or revolutionary provenance - face the
alternative of (a) moderating their policies and accepting the constraints (and
threats) of conservative interest groups (economic, political and military); or (b)
challenging those constraints (and threats), and striving for greater 'relative state
autonomy'. That, we have seen, is precisely what Castro resolved to do.

Conversely, political and economic padlocks are designed to make such radical
departures impossible.
Dahlian democracy can therefore serve as a brake on radical, reformist, as well
as authoritarian, conservative governments. As Albert Hirschman pointed out
(long before the latest neo-liberal wave engulfed Latin America), the traditional,
liberal, Tocquevillean argument for protecting society and the economy against
the caprices of a despotic prince could also be used to constrain the whims of an
enfranchised people: 'if it is true that the economy must be deferred to, then there
is a case not only for constraining the imprudent actions of the prince but [also]
for repressing those of the people, for limiting participation, in short, for crushing
anything that could be interpreted by some economist-king as a threat to the

proper functioning of the "delicate watch" [of the economy]' (Hirschman, 1979,
pp. 84?5). And there is no shortage of economist-kings today (Montecinos and
Markoff, 2001).
The democratic 'brake' may derive from a genuine, affective attachment to
democratic norms; but it also - perhaps more often - affords a powerful

instrumental critique, for both domestic and foreign consumption. Hence the
prolific coining - and consequent debasement - of democratic discourse,

exemplified by President Reagan's equation of the Nicaraguan contras with the
founding fathers of the American Republic. Measuring the relative weight of
affective and instrumental attachments is never easy; the actors themselves may
have no idea of the balance (I doubt that President Reagan did); so a large
measure of structural hypocrisy is normal. As analysts, we have to ask whether a
'democratic tradition' is indeed supported by autonomous values - a democratic
'political culture' - or rather by considerations of collective advantage. What

counts: values or interests? Usually, the answer is revealed only in the crucible of

crisis, when actors are forced to decide, and the mask of structural hypocrisy
slips. Hence the relevant example of interwar Europe. The new democracies of
Latin America (and their foreign admirers) will be really put to the test when
major recession strikes, when popular mobilization burgeons, or when

authoritarian alternatives (of left or right) beckon.
As for revolutions and 'revolutionary traditions' - it all depends which

revolution. I have suggested that the liberal, anti-colonial origins of the Latin
American republics conferred a certain patriotic and prescriptive right to liberal
republican government, which may help explain the tenacity of that form of
government in the continent (frequent lapses notwithstanding). Twentiethcentury revolutions, premised on the expansion of both political and social rights,
have displayed an ambivalent relationship to (procedural, liberal, Dahlian)

democracy. While they may topple authoritarian regimes, boast democratic
goals, and, in some cases (e.g., Bolivia, 1952) genuinely advance democratic
participation, they also check and challenge (procedural) democracy, in two
principal respects, one economic, the other political.
First, revolutionary regimes may opt for a trade-off between democracy and
material betterment, on the grounds that the latter is more crucial (food is more
important than the franchise), and that, in a supposed zero-sum situation, both
are not possible; procedural democracy would inhibit redistribution; the

genuinely redistributionist state must therefore break free of its 'structural
dependence on capital' and achieve a large measure of autonomy - autonomy,
that is, of both domestic and international capital. The argument suffers from an
inherent paternalism (when the going gets tough, the masses cannot be trusted to
vote for a redistributionist government); but it also displays a degree of realism

(capital is quite capable of destabilising redistributionist governments: witness
the fate of Arbenz or Allende). Cuba has survived destabilisation, but at great
cost, such that the material betterment promised by the revolution - that is, the
implicit quid pro quo for forfeiting a flawed but real democratic 'tradition' - was
quite limited. Whether the trade-off was worth it is, as I have said, a matter for
Cubans.
Second, revolutionary regimes may shelve procedural democracy on the

(political) grounds that it is a bourgeois sham and that something better something more direct, popular and organic - is (implicitly or explicitly) on offer.
This can be a valid argument, but it tends to suffer from diminishing returns.
66 Mexico weathered the economic crisis of 1994?5 without major political upheaval;
indeed, the legacy of that crisis was probably the principal factor contributing to the
historic defeat of the PRI in the July 2000 presidential election, which - at national
level, at least - seemed to complete Mexico's protracted democratic transition.
Brazilian democracy also survived the 1998 crisis, which came at a time of significant
popular mobilization (the PT; the Landless Movement). Meanwhile, Colombia suffers
from recession and endemic guerrilla war; democracy in both Peru and Ecuador has
recently teetered on the brink of authoritarian relapse; and Venezuela may be

witnessing the gestation of a new authoritarianism (although apocalyptic visions
would seem, at present, to be both imaginative and premature).
Alan Knight
Revolutions (in Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua) have overthrown narrow,

oligarchic, pseudo-democratic regimes, and have both expanded procedural
democracy and empowered subaltern groups more broadly (by means of schools,
sindicatos, peasant leagues, political parties). 'Empowerment' and 'informal

democratization' therefore mean something and are not mere alibis of leftist
authoritarianism. However, they are difficult to measure (hence my diffidence in
respect of Cuba - or, indeed, any where outside of Mexico); and they tend to fade
with time. They are products of revolutionary situations - unusual, sporadic,
time-bound occurrences - and they are not easily institutionalized.

Institutionalization, in fact, can often mean manipulation or regimentation: for
example, in Mexico's ejidos or Cuba's Committees for the Defence of the

Revolution. Whether it is Michels' 'iron law of oligarchy', Acton's corrupting
power, or the insidious effect of capital, markets and foreign enemies, these
agencies of organic or popular democracy do not live up to expectations. In the
medium and long-term, therefore, the claim to a superior organic democracy
starts to ring hollow; and boring old bourgeois democracy begins to exert a fresh
appeal.
In light of these somewhat sobering thoughts, it is not surprising that
revolutionary promises are nowadays rarely heard and even more rarely believed.
This applies to both left and right: revolutionary redistribution has been widely
abandoned in favour of modest incremental reformism (Ellner, 1993, pp. 2-3ff.);
but, at the same time - and quite logically, given their functional interdependence
- radical authoritarian alternatives are also at a discount. No revolution, no

counter-revolution. The epic battles of the twentieth century have, as it were,
been shelved. Today's Latin American leaders, when they seek the imprimatur of
history, prefer to vault over the immediate past into the safer and murkier reaches
of the nineteenth century. President Chavez invokes Bolivar, while President
Salinas concocted a persuasive discourse premised on the notion of 'social

liberalism', which dated back to the 1850s, thereby conveniently by-passing the
armed Revolution and its Cardenista sequel (Knight, 1996, pp. 3-7). However, I
do not believe that discourses determine political outomes. Rather, they reflect
current interests and concerns. And the current conjuncture clearly favours a
market-friendly, 'padlocked' democracy, resistant to popular revolution and

conservative authoritarianism alike. The 'revolutionary tradition' appears
moribund; the democratic 'tradition' commands the field. But in its moment of
greatest triumph, it has a weary and haggard look.
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